Heart Of Darkness
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: Disinformation. Half-truths. Lies. AKA, the official story. But, there's the story they don't want you to know. They'll do anything to keep it in. Murder. Torture. But they can't. Somebody always talks. This is that story. Don't say I didn't warn you.
1. Concrete Jungle

**HEART OF DARKNESS**

_Author's Note: To any of my readers who may be affiliated with or knowledgeable about the US military. Yes, I know this is not how any of the branches of the service work, but I have taken some liberties for the sake of continuity in a superhero universe, especially considering the quasi-military status of S.H.I.E.L.D. Also, yes fellow Watchmen fans, I know that Operation Wrath of God was in 1970-71. I have fudged the dates by months to fit into this slightly expanded universe. Mea culpa. I assure you, however, I am NOT taking out the squid._

**WARNING: The allegations and situations described in this document do not correspond to the documentation and files of the United States government, NYPD, the JLA, the Avengers, the X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D. or any other official source. **

**Prologue: Blood Oath**

**I: Eddie**

_Eddie Blake, you old son of a bitch, you're getting what you deserve._

It took a lot to make the Comedian sick, but while the rest of the American forces were celebrating their victory, he was lying in his bed, in his tent, stricken with fever.

The fever was a special gift from the large, festering wound crawling and oozing all over his face.

And there was no worse place to be laid up with on earth than the middle of a fucking jungle.

God Almighty, do I hate this fucking jungle. This fucking jungle and these fucking gooks and that crazy bitch, all this time I looked after her and she tries to kill me with a bottle because I refuse to stay in this fucking jungle with her and somebody's kid.

She says it's my kid.

How the fuck would she know?

What, I'm the only guy who walked into that bar who ever fucked her?

No, I'm the only guy who ever walked into that bar who didn't just fuck her and forget about her.

And this is the fucking thanks I get.

_Don't feel goddamn sorry for yourself, Eddie, you did kill her._

Jesus, what if it was my kid?

Well, she didn't have to be such a cunt about it.

I would have sent the dumb bitch money, got the little half-breed a nice government job when it grew up, but she had to do it.

Try and kill me, slash my face, for all I know the next shot could have been at my throat.

Well, you may get your wish, you crazy gook bitch.

I may never get out of this bed, alive, I might just die here in this fucking jungle, like a dirty fucking dog.

God Almighty, I do hate this fucking jungle.

I wish Doc B had brought a fucking nurse, I'd at least like to see a real American girl, one more goddamn time before I die.

You had one of those, Eddie.

She wanted to be here until this thing was finished.

And you wanted her in New York.

For her own good.

Yeah, right.

Look what happened to her.

I should have had her here with me, she woulda been alright.

I woulda looked after her.

And she'd be here now to look after me.

Because Eddie needed looking after.

The cut on his face had become very, very infected.

Doc B had lots of theories.

The bottle was dirty.

His face had been dirty.

Whatever it was, Doc B never came back to figure it out.

Merrie would have known what to do.

So would her daughter.

The Comedian was lying there in his tent, dizzy and in pain, in just his underwear, under the blanket, sweating and suffering, and thinking this was it.

Going to get what I deserve.

That was when a glowing blue arm held the tent flap open.

It was the other doctor, the big blue one, and unlike Doc B, who hadn't been around for a couple of days, he had an expression of concern on his face.

Ostermann had actually been helping him.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

"Hiya Doc. Gonna empty my bucket for me, again, today?"

"Yes. You look much worse, today, Comedian. I brought you some more water."

"I can't lift the canteen, Doc."

"Then I will help you."

Well, this is fucking humiliating.

"I think Dr. Bieganski has left you to die, Comedian. I don't think he ever gave you proper treatment, and now he's abandoned you to your fate."

"That's what I was thinkin'. I guess I'll be seein' you in Hell, Doc."

"No. You had a point. The other night, in the bar. I could have done something, no, I should have done something. At the very least I could have stood between the two of you. I'm not going to compound my mistake by letting you die, too. I'd help you clean yourself up, but I'm going to get you help, from someone who knows more about it than I do. I'll be back very soon."

The Doc was gone in a flash of blue, and in about ten minutes, he was back, in another flash of blue.

And there she was, like a sweet little angel from Hell, carrying Merrie's book under her arm, and with her old familiar WWII Issue medic kit in hand, decked out in her combat fatigue costume.

"Oh Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ and all the saints, Great Thor, Mother of All!" she exclaimed.

That about covered every religion you could think of.

Liv was on the floor beside him in seconds flat, pushing his sweat-soaked, bloody, dirty hair away from his clammy forehead.

Woman's touch.

"Jesus, this is bad, Jon! Eddie? Jesus, Eddie, are you conscious? D'you know where the fuck Doc B is?"

"He left me to die. What the fuck are you doing here, kid?"

"Where you have been, I have been. What you have done, I have done. What you must do, I must do. And where you go, I will follow. Didja forget that?"

"Do you know what I did?"

"Fuck, Eddie, I know everything you did in your whole fuckin' life. What you ain't told me, I figured out. Two days after JFK got shot I asked you why you didn't bring me any cowboy stuff back from Texas, knowin' how much I liked Westerns. She tried to kill you, didn't she? You got an infection. You prob'ly got blood poisoning. You're lyin' here in this shithole tent, sweatin' it out, burnin' up with fever, left to die, aint'cha? She tried to kill you an' she almost succeeded. Maybe she got what was comin' to her."

"Trivelino!" Jon exclaimed.

"Jesus Christ, kid!" the Comedian added.

"C'mon, don't piss on my head and tell me it's fuckin' rainin'! Shit, after we pulled out, if she went home pregnant with a white man's child, her own family mighta killed her. And you keep prayin', Eddie. We're both gonna need it. Jon, I might need your help."

"What should I do?"

"Boil some water for me. And go into Doc B's tent. Get me some gloves, and sterile dressings. I think I've got the rest covered. And see if he has anything stronger than penicillin in there. And if you see him, you tell him to run. Tell that Polack motherfucker to keep runnin', and never stop, until he feels like dyin'. Real hard. Because I'll be comin' for him."

The Doc looked like he was going to say something about that, and then, after he put some water in Eddie's cooking pot and put it on the camp stove, he left.

The kid looked down at him, and for a minute, she really did look just like Merrie.

She wrapped an ice pack in a towel, and put it on his forehead for a minute, before she gently lifted his head and put it under his neck.

Only she was giving him the same look Merrie reserved only for Jack, touching the uninjured side of his face, again.

Woman's touch.

"I'm gonna fix you up, Eddie. You're gonna be alright. I promise."

"Didn't I ask youse to wear a skirt for me, next time I saw youse, kid?"

"You said when you came home, Eddie. I was gonna go out t'day, with my friend Jean Grey, ta go buy it."

"Yeah, well, after youse fixes me up and you go back to New York, don't you forget it."

"I won't, Eddie. I promise. Hell, I'll even buy a pair of panties an' a fuckin' bra. That match."

She opened up the medic kit, and went to work.

* * *

**Chapter One: Concrete Jungle**

**Excerpt from Blood, Sweat and Tears of Laughter: The True Story of Harlequin & the Comedian**

Everybody knows the story.

They made a movie about it, with Oliver Reed and Mila Jojovich in it.

That was her first American movie.

_Deep Red_.

Wasn't that a great movie?

Sure was.

I saw it, two, three times.

You probably did, too.

Didn't they give it an NC-17 because of all the sex and violence and cursing?

Then, even with some of it cut out, man, could you believe what they let past as an R?

And the NC-17 version?

Holy shit!

So, we all know the story.

The Comedian, he knew the Harlequin since she was just a kid.

He knew her family.

Shadowy mask stuff.

But Harlequin, she was a bad kid.

And when she got to be a teenager, well, she was a bad, bad, bad teenager.

She went for him, but he still thought of her as just this kid.

Then, after he got back from 'Nam, she saved his life in a bad, bloody way, in a bad, bloody riot, and he decided to take her on as an apprentice, like Batman wanted him to, and, in the fullness of time, the Comedian and the Harlequin fell into a bad, dirty kind of love that has lasted longer than the lives of some of their fellow masks.

And thanks to Infinity Formula, he's in his 80's and she's in her 60's but they both seem to have got stuck around 35, and after all these years, and many, many, many dance partners on their respective cards, they're still working together, and they're still in bad, dirty, violent good bad guy love.

If you don't look too closely at the body count, and shrug and say, well, they were all scumbags, anyway, it's kind of nice.

Yes, I remember the part in the movie where Oliver Reed and Mila Jojovich get in this big ultraviolent superhero brawl, down on the waterfront, and beat the hell out of one another, and she has him on the ground, and she's on top of him with a gun to his head, and then she throws it away and they kiss.

Am I trying to tell you that didn't happen?

No.

It happened.

But I am trying to tell you that long before that fateful night on the docks, long before the Knot Top riot, long before the Comedian ever took Harlequin on as an apprentice, and turned her messy, tough chick, mad genius, old-fashioned crazy Irish drunk life around, there was something more between them than his ignorance and her longing looks.

What you saw in the alley that began not in 1971, but in 1968.

Miles and years between 1968 and 1971, entire lifetimes.

She was 18.

Young, brilliant, reckless and drunk, she had two years as the most ultraviolent, ruthless and effective street-level mask since the Comedian hit the streets when he was 16, and was already the veteran of battles in which she had one side of her face smashed in with rebar, got her throat slit, and took a thirty-aught-six bullet in the guts that was only partially impeded by a bulletproof vest.

She knew what she wanted out of life; she wanted to be a good mask, to be the best mask she could be, and just to be good rather than evil.

She wanted the Comedian, and had always been the kind of son of a bitch who took what she wanted, no questions asked.

He was 44.

A big, brash, bad, bullying 44, a Mack truck of a black Irishman still in the prime of his life. Forged in a violent home, tested by the war in Europe and the war in the streets, he was a man who had raised all the children in his care and was still good-looking, strong and ultraviolent.

He was a man who had and lost everything a man could want from life before he was thirty, and was, in the second act of his life, looking for another chance to have just a little bit of what every other guy got who wasn't a guy like him.

They came together by accident, and stayed that way in secret, and the tumultuous years passed them both, neither one knowing what to say next, or what to do. They were torn apart and thrown together by war, and by violence, by drunkenness and jealousy and promiscuity, by bravado and machismo and stupid pride, until something clicked on that hot, dark night down on the docks that made them realise that God went down to Hell and made The Comedian, and then He made the Harlequin for him, out of the hottest of hellfire.

Do you remember, in the movie, the Harlequin puts the gun to the Comedian's head, and she says:

"I'll either have your love or your blood on me, you son of a bitch, I can't take it anymore!"

And the Comedian takes her head in his hands, and he snarls.

"You are my blood."

And she throws the gun away, and they just kiss the hell out of each other?

Even if they didn't say that to each other, they should have, because isn't that just crazy and tragic and sick, but yet somehow strangely beautiful?

It is.

And so is the truth about them, which is finally going to be told.

Who am I to tell it?

I'm nobody.

But I know everything.

**Interlude: Wayne Manor, Long Island, New York, 1962**

Like a thief in the night, Liv Napier, 13, streaked up the three flights of stairs, three or four long, winding spiral staircases, pounding her legs down harder on every step as her knapsack pounded against her back, and her heart pounded against her rib cage.

She pulled down the hatch for the attic and climbed up to her secret spot; the comfortable old mattress with the big blanket, and the milk crates full of her secret porno stash.

Her brother, Dick, with whom she shared a bedroom big enough for five people, he'd found out about it, somehow, but nobody else knew, and good old Dick, he was kind of a goody-goody, but he kept his lip zipped about it.

He called it her Super Secret Whack-Off Cave.

And Liv spent a lot of time there.

But, tonight, tonight, she could hardly make it up into the attic, because her head and her belly were on fire and her legs were like jelly.

Because tonight, tonight, tonight was going to be the absolute best night of her whole entire life so far.

The cheapest, dirtiest thrill that a nasty little pervert like her could ever have.

It promised to be about ten thousand percent better than screwing old Popeye MacTavish in the back seat of the '33 Ford V-8 when she went around the back of the pawnshop at Fulton and Rockaway to buy beer.

Hell, it more than made up for Popeye giving her the shoe.

She made sure the attic hatch was shut, and dragged a big box over it, just in case.

Then, furtively, she scuttled over to her corner.

Unbenknownst to Dick, this was also where she kept her booze, too.

Then, looking around as though, somehow, someone could still see her, she opened her knapsack.

From it, she took a cheap fifty cent dirty book.

Liv, although a lover of great literature, was a big buyer of cheap fifty cent dirty books, but not any old cheap fifty cent dirty books, just the ones about superheroes.

Stay in your own species, yunno?

When you're 13, and you wouldn't even think abut fucking anybody under the age of 25,and you like yours at 35 and up, well, unless they managed to look like a man before that, you don't get as much action as you'd like, especially when you'd like it every day.

Twice.

Or more.

And that, Best Beloved, is why God made people who write fuckbooks.

There was a news-stand, right around the pawnshop, in her old neighbourhood in East New York, where the guy would sell anything to anybody who had the money to pay for it.

She kept them in a box under her bed, which is where this one would go after she finished with tonight.

Tonight, tonight!

Also, from the backpack, she carefully removed a carefully lifted half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and a prize, a trophy.

Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma, but this morning there was a new fifty cent dirty book out about Eddie.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

His name rolled off her tongue as sweet and lowdown as she knew he would, and just saying his name made her think about unspeakable things.

He looked at her and he saw a little kid, but Liv knew she was growing up fast, and in three, four years he wasn't going anywhere.

Even if someday I have to put a gun to his head.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, oh, Eddie…

The book was called "The Comedian's Audience", and from the blurb on the back, it looked like it was about him going around to meet up with broads he had saved from peril and them expressing their gratitude.

And, this very afternoon, while she was bumming around Laurie's house, after training, waiting for Laurie to change her clothes, Laurie was forever changing her clothes, Liv was smoking a cigarette and wondering where she was going to buy booze and get laid now that old Popeye MacTavish found out she was only 13 and gave her the shoe, and did Joe Mac really think of her that way, when opportunity presented itself.

Not the opportunity to liberate a half of a bottle of whiskey from under the kitchen table that Eddie and Sally would assume they had killed the night before, that was a rare, and wondrous opportunity, but not as rare, not as wondrous as the one that presented itself as Sally made her way to the laundry room, carrying the basket and complaining, as Liv was hastily putting out the cigarette and hiding the fuckbook inside her history textbook.

"…not enough that he doesn't call before he comes over, the sunnuvabitch, now he thinks he can leave his dirty shorts around…"

Leave his dirty shorts around?

Dirty shorts?

Dirty shorts!

DIRTY SHORTS! DIRTY SHORTS!

GREAT GOD IN HEAVEN, EDDIE'S…._**DIRTY**_… _**SHORTS**_!

Liv thought fast.

She got up, got a glass from the dish tray and threw it on the floor.

It broke.

Sally came in.

"What was that?"

"I broke a glass. Sorry. I'll get the broom."

_**ZOOOOOOOM!**_

She went to the laundry room, and grabbed those dirty shorts sitting off to the side of the basket and shoved them in her pocket.

In her pocket?

_I've got Eddie's dirty shorts in my pocket!_

Liv held onto the broom until her legs stopped trembling.

She swept up the glass.

"Well, I got this big History test tomorrow, so I gotta go, Sally. Tell Laurie I'm sorry an' I'll see her tomorrow, g'bye, seeya tomorrow after school!"

Liv handed Sally the broom and she was gone.

Like a coooooool breeze.

And now, alone in her secret spot, Liv stripped down to her GI-Issue boxers and undershirt, and climbed into her bed, uncapped the whiskey bottle, took a swallow and began to thumb through the dirty book, looking for something that was particularly and entirely filthy.

Something especially nasty, dirty and crude.

Oho!

Costume fucking!

Ah, in the world of things that are fine and hot, there must be nothing quite so fine and hot as getting pounded by Eddie Blake whilst he still has his costume on.

"…Alice allowed him to lift her onto the kitchen table…"

On the table!

Liv took another belt of whiskey.

She was starting to sweat, and her hands began to tremble; they trembled so much she had to put the whiskey bottle down.

"…he didn't even bother to take off his guns…"

Didn't he?

"…soft black leather of the pants was like a second skin…"

Liv was beginning to pant.

Sure is, it sure is.

Her heart raced in her chest, thudding against the wall of her ribs as sweat beaded on her forehead and her chest.

Her mouth was dry, she licked her lips.

The anticipation was murderous.

"…Alice could feel the slippery heat of the soft black leather and the cold steel of the grips of the pistols on her naked thighs that she wrapped around him, as, laughing, the Comedian thrust his long, thick, heavy cock into her hungry wet pussy, over and over again…"

BINGO!

Liv gasped, and grunted savagely in a kind of sublime frustration, as she entered compulsive masturbator's nirvana.

Her mind became wonderfully empty of anything except an extreme and violent need to get off, and the certainty that, in that moment she was capable of doing anything, anything, to ensure complete and total satisfaction.

She took another drink, tossed the book aside, grabbed the dirty shorts from her backpack, draped them over her face and took a good, long, sniff as she darted her hand inside the flap of her boxers.

Mmmmmmm, now that's a whole lot of man!

Most people would regard this as something foul and shameful, but no such thoughts crowded Liv's mind, which was altogether too full of phantasmagoric, even Burroughsian visions of wild, muscular, lustful fucking.

It took her less than three minutes to completely come her brains out, her body arching violently ff and then slamming back onto the old mattress.

"Oh shit! Shit, shit, shit, oh fuck, fuck! FUCK! I'm dyin' dyin, Eddie, I'm dyin'!" she screamed.

There was a thin hope at the back of her mind that her screams of ecstasy didn't waft through the whole place, and if they did, that Pop, Dick and Alfred would be discreet.

Liv collapsed into the pillows in a tangled heap, and removed her trophy from her face so she could breathe.

Thinking fast, she stuffed them into a plastic lunch bag from the bottom of her knapsack, and stuck them under the mattress.

She took another drink, and stashed the bottle and the book.

"That oughta keep 'em fresh for awhile. Damn. That's what I call a great fuckin' night." She sighed.

Lying on her back, tingling pleasantly in the soft afterglow of the most amazing orgasm you could give yourself, she felt the edges of a heated feeling of urgency still prowling her guts.

She realised that she was going to need to get some real action, and soon.

She had known Joe since she was 7 and he was 8, and he was one of her best friends in the world.

They both liked to listen to records, read comic books, and work on cars, and even though Joe was 14, he had been shaving for about six months, he didn't look like any kid, and Laurie said she thought he kinda liked her, yunno, _that way_, and maybe Joe Mac, maybe he wouldn't mind, every once in awahile…

She put herself together, and went back down to her bedroom.

Dick was watching TV.

She reached for the phone.

"Hey, Joe…it's me, Liv. No, it ain't about the car, but yeah, we're gonna get to that. Listen, y'think, tomorrow night, late maybe, youse can let me in? I'll come up the fire escape…there's somethin' I gotta talk to you about. Okay, Joe. I'll see ya then. Bye."

She pulled up a cushion, and went and sat by Dick.

"Were you lining up a date with Joe Mac? Because if you were, that would be normal. Which would be a nice change for you."

"Shut up, Dick."

"My sister, the pervert."

"Didja hear me tellya to shut up?"

"Yeah, yeah. I heard you. Hey, John Wayne's on the Late Movie t'night."

"Really? Cool! I'll go make popcorn."

Liv got up and went to the door.

"Hey, Liv? Wash your hands, okay? Real good."

"Real funny, Dick. Real fuckin' funny."

* * *

**New York City, 1968- Bushwick, Brooklyn **

**I: Anonymous**

Like a lot of neighbourhoods in New York City, Bushwick used to be a nice place to live.

Decent, hard-working folks, living in neat wood houses on orderly blocks.

That was then.

This is now.

Now, like a lot of neighbourhoods in New York City, the place is like a demilitarized zone.

Derelict buildings.

Empty lots.

Drugs.

Crime.

Arson.

A typical inner-city hellhole, where those decent people, hell, even halfway decent people who are unlucky enough to be stuck there live in constant fear of victimisation, dreaming of and grasping towards the day when they can get the hell out.

It was the kind of place where people had little hope, and little help.

They were poor, and they were forgotten by the bigwigs downtown, and their plight was ignored by cops on the take, and masks so hell-bent on Saving the World that they never noticed the Armageddon going on in their own backyards.

Places like Bushwick were only a ride on the subway away from their gleaming headquarters in Manhattan, lining Fifth Avenue or overlooking Central Park.

Still, they might as well have been in another country.

But, there was one mask who didn't forget Bushwick, and places like it.

She didn't get her picture taken with the mayor, and there was no signal for Commissioner Gordon to call her; no shiny uniform and big smile and black-tie affairs.

They don't like to see a mask's costume with real blood and real bullet holes, not downtown.

But she was their superhero, she was a native son of the big, brawling boroughs, she had grown up in the streets with a cigarette in her mouth and a beer in the fist she wasn't using to punch somebody's lights out. She wasn't faster than a speeding bullet, but she had used her body to stop some of them, and she sure was fast with a speeding bullet, or a sharp knife, or a blow that could disable or kill.

She defended them when no one else would, and if the only justice that would do was street justice, rough justice, she wasn't afraid to mete it out.

It was a good night when the bodies in the street were badguy bodies.

When the flames that rose into the sky were from their lairs burning.

When the screams or pain and terror came from their throats.

Those were good nights.

The nights when somebody had called the Harlequin.

Maybe that's why they did it.

Chose Bushwick.

The car, big and black and speeding, tore down Knickerbocker Avenue in the dead of night like a thirty-aught-six bullet, and slowed, slowed but didn't stop, to disgorge a bundle of rags.

Bloody rags, yellow and purple and army green.

With bits of clanking metal attached to it.

The bundle of rags rolled a little down the sidewalk before it flopped into the gutter.

In the wake of the speeding car, it was still and quiet in the late night street, and, in their houses, they waited for a few moments.

These decent, or at least halfways decent, folks.

Soon, the lights came on in the windows.

It wasn't still for long, because the bundle of rags began to stir, and then to move.

To crawl along in the gutter, fighting to its last.

The lighted windows opened, and a few heads popped out, warily.

The first door to open was to Mr. Martinez' news-stand.

He came out, warily, a Saturday night special in his hands.

Something was familiar about the bloody bright-colored bundle of rags, dragging itself through the gutters.

"Help." It gurgled, reaching its small, bloody, tattooed hand up to Mr. Martinez.

He took it, squeezed her hand, almost instinctively.

"_Dios mio_! Don't worry, we'll help you. I'll get the doctor. They got her! Somebody got her! Help! Help! Call the police! Somebody, call the police!"

Old Mrs. Benza, who had lived in Bushwick since she was a baby and refused to leave no matter how bad things got, she and Mr. Benza were coming out of their building.

"You stay with her. I'm gonna go get the doctor."

Mrs. Benza knelt down beside the bloody bundle of rags and took the hard little tattooed hand in her gnarled old hand.

"It's alright. You're going to be alright."

Mr. Benza took the rope off of his bathrobe and tied it around the injured superhero's bleeding throat,

Martinez began to run, down the street, and then turned at the corner, to run to the All Nite Free Clinic, to get Dr. Levitt.

Mr. Robinson, who ran the diner across the street called for the ambulance, and he came out, with a shotgun in his hands, in case whoever it was came back.

Alejandrro Martinez' son came reeling out of a neighbourhood bar, with half the place behind him.

People had sticks and knives and chains and bats.

More are more were coming out as the word travelled the streets.

Faster than a speeding bullet.

Mr. Levitt, with his tattoo from Auschwitz, who ran the clinic at the end of the street came running, running into the night with his pyjamas still on.

"Who's not afraid of blood? I need to stop this bleeding."

"I'm not afraid. I just got back from 'Nam. I'll help."Alejandro's son said.

"I need you to hold those two bits of skin together. Good. That's good."

When the ambulance and the police cars got there, they found a little crowd of angry people in their pyjamas and robes, or standing in the street in their underwear and slippers.

The Puerto-Rican kid, the vet with the drug problem, who, Mr. Robinson and Dr Levitt thought, was Alejandro's son, he grabbed a cop by the lapels of his uniform.

An important-looking cop, who usually didn't go out on calls like this.

There was still blood on his hands.

"You motherfuckers, you better get the motherfucker who did this to the Harlequin! If you let them go, if you let her die, we're gonna burn down our own fuckin' neighbourhood! We're gonna make sure the whole fuckin' borough, all the boroughs go up in flames!"

The cop, an Irishman, watched the paramedics loading the body onto the stretcher, and looked at the pool of blood in the gutter.

He moved the boy's bloody hands away, leaving smears on his blue serge.

"The Harlequin's one of ours, kid. Nobody's gettin' away with this. Until we find out who did this, all bets are off." He said.

Another cop took statements, and the crime scene investigators came, and roped off the area.

Around that time, Commissioner Gordon's telephone jangled him out of a deep sleep.

He awoke with a start, knowing something was wrong.

"What? What now?"

"Jesus, Commissioner. It's Lieutenant Halloran. Somebody tried to take the Harlequin out. They dumped her out of a car in Bushwick, right on Knickerbocker Avenue. I just came from there. They beat her up good, like torture, and cut her throat from ear to ear."

"Oh my God! Oh, Jesus Christ! Is she still alive?"

"Barely. Jesus, Jim, lyin' there in the street, she looked so helpless. And so small. I never realised what a little girl she was. I got a daughter her age at home, about the same age. Red hair, too. You want me to fire up the Bat-Signal?"

"No. I know how to contact him. I'll phone him, myself."

**II: Jack**

They never explain anything to you, the Joker was used to that.

They came in the wee hours of the morning and told him to put his jumpsuit on, and they chained his hands together and his feet and marched him down the hall and into the elevator, and when it opened, Bats was there.

He had a quip at the ready, but there was something about the line of the Batman's mouth, and the cast to his usually emotionless eyes that froze the Joker's jocularity upon his lips.

Bats ushered him quietly and quickly up the stairs, to the roof, and into the Bat-Copter.

He was in the air in a matter of moments.

"Tonight, someone pulled Trivelino off the street. Tortured her. Beat her up. Then they drove her down Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick, cut her throat from ear to ear and pushed her out of the car. She's at Brooklyn General. For one thing, she needs blood, and yours and her blood type is rare. For another, the doctors don't think she's going to make it. You need to be there." He said.

He was trying to keep the emotion out of his voice.

"Who did this, Mr. Wayne?"

Batman looked over at him, his eyes full of sorrow and malice.

"Don't you know, Dr. Napier?"

"Yes, Mr. Wayne. I think I do."

* * *

It seemed like an army of doctors that rushed him into the room in intensive care, where his daughter lay silent and still, looking very small and helpless indeed, hooked up to IV's and machines.

They put a paper in front of him, waiver something, and he signed it.

Someone was putting a needle in his arm, but Jack hardly noticed.

They filled up two bags with his blood, and bandaged his arm, and then they were pushing him back towards the door.

Batman stopped them.

"Let him stay. He's her father."

"I thought you…" the nurse began.

"I'm her stepfather."

Clanking all the way, Jack made his way over to the bed.

They were pumping his blood into Livvie's veins.

"Is it alright if I touch her?" he asked a nurse.

"Just her hand, Mr. Joker."

"Dr. Napier, if you please."

She didn't open her eyes, but her fingers closed around his.

Soon, they made him go.

They had work to do.

* * *

He and the Bat and Robin sat in the waiting room for an hour, and then Eddie showed up, with his nephew, Paulie, and his daughter, Laurie.

They both looked like they had been crying, and when they saw Jack, they both looked like they might cry some more.

Because they knew it was bad.

"Did we make it in time? Is the kid still alive?" Eddie asked.

"For now." Bats said.

Jack didn't say anything.

He sat there with his head in his hands.

Eddie came and sat beside him.

"She'll make it, Jack. She's tough."

"Do you think she's this tough, Eddie?"

"She's Merrie Damiano's kid, ain't she? Fuck yeah, she's tough."

**II: Eddie**

"Excuse me, but do any of you gentlemen have AB negative blood? I'm afraid we've taken as much from…Dr. Napier as we can without endangering his life. It's a miracle, but we almost have…er, the Harlequin stabilized. If we can get one more donor, quickly, I think we might be able to save her life."

The doctor, who had blood all over his bluish-green scrubs, and on his gloves and mask, had an anxious look in his eyes, behind his glasses.

"I'm O positive. Dick?"

"Type A, Bruce."

Eddie thought about it for a minute.

The kid had an old-fashioned attitude about blood.

If it was blood between them, well?

He thought about Merrie Napier, and about a Witch's Promise.

What did his mother tell him?

Even a witch can't change fate, but because she can see it, she can bend it, and shape it to her will.

The Comedian stood up and rolled up his sleeve.

"Me, Doc. That's my blood type. How about that, Bruce? Ya can't fuck with fate, canya?"

Batman gave him a grim smile and a slight nod.

The Comedian left with the anxious doctor.

"Bruce? Do you know what he's talking about?" Dick asked.

Bruce Wayne put his face in his hands.

"Yes, Dick. I do."

* * *

They were all in the waiting room another three hours before the same doctor came out again.

He couldn't believe it.

The Harlequin was awake, and alert, and she was asking for her father, and for her stepfather.

And for Mr. Blake.

* * *

"Pop? Mr. Blake? Daddy? Is this really happening? Am I still alive?"

"You're alive, Livvie."

"Did you save me, Daddy?"

"They took as much blood from me as they could. Then, Eddie took over. He just happens to have the same blood type as us? Isn't that funny?"

"No. It's fate." Batman said.

"Don't be morose, Bats."

"He's right. It's fate." Eddie said.

Liv reached for his arm, and put her hand over the place where the nurse put the bandage after she took the needle out.

"You didn't hafta do that, Mr. Blake."

"Sure I did, kid."

"You mean it's blood between us, now?"

The Comedian didn't hesitate.

"Yeah."

"Eddie, are you sure…" Jack began

"Jack, it's been blood between all three of us since 1951. I'm sure. And as for you, kid, ain't it been blood between us since I pulled you out from under my basement steps when you were just 11? After that punk kid stabbed youse in the park, an' you nearly killed him with a brick?"

Eddie put his hand over hers.

Liv smiled.

"If it's blood between us, we gotta have an oath. I swear, by my blood, and on my honour as long as I live, that wherever you have been, I have been. Whatever you have done, I have done. Whatever you do, I will do. And wherever you go, I will follow." She said.

Batman and the Joker exchanged anxious looks.

Eddie chuckled a little.

They must have been thinking, that's a hello of an oath.

Why would she swear an oath like that on goddamn Eddie Blake?

"It's like you and Merrie, Jack. It's alright. I can live with that, kid. You can hold me to it. An I'll be holdin' you to it, as well. I swear."

He squeezed her hand.

Liv smiled, thinly, and then, she drifted off to sleep.

The nurse made the three men leave.

* * *

Twenty-four hours from the time she arrived in the ICU, the doctors transferred Liv up to a regular room in Brooklyn General.

They were going to keep her for another day or so, for observation, and then she'd be ready to go home.

The danger was over.

The little band of supporters, tired and hungry, having stayed awake almost a whole day on cigarettes and coffee found their long vigil at an end.

Quietly, before the Batman came to return him to Arkham, the Joker and the Comedian spoke once more.

"That was a pretty serious oath, there, Eddie. Livvie's like her mother. She takes things like that seriously." She won't release you from it. Ever." Jack warned him.

"I know, Jack. I take it seriously, too. Because, if I break it, she'll kill me. Then again, I got no intention of lettin' her off the hook, either. But, better her than a stranger from the street. I gotta go home. Take a shower. Sleep."

Eddie Blake, however, did no such thing until Bruce Wayne returned from Arkham Asylum.

Then he took Paulie home, and then he took Laurie back to Sal's place, and finally, he went home, himself.

Batman escorted the Joker back to Arkham, in irons.

"Mr. Wayne?"

"Yes, Dr. Napier?"

"Did that thing in the hospital, with Livvie and Eddie and the oath, did it disturb you? I'm finding it very disturbing."

"So am I."

Silence.

"Dr. Napier?"

"Yes, Mr. Wayne?"

"It's probably for the best."

"Probably. You know what my wife would have said?"

"That it's fate?"

"Yes, Mr. Wayne. Fate. Do you believe in fate?"

"No."

"Neither do I."

* * *

**Watchmen Headquarters, one month later**

The Comedian knew damn well that the Watchmen only existed as a team in the minds of the press and the eyes of the public; their monthly meetings were just this side of brawls, and most of them hated one or more of the others for some reason.

That was why he rarely attended, but he was going to come to this one, because the Harlequin had come back from the dead, yet again, and, he wanted to see how she made out.

Besides, it was blood between them, now.

Of course, it always had been.

He had gone to see her in the hospital; Laurie quit hating him long enough to call him up in tears and ask him to drive her to Brooklyn General to see Liv, because Ostermann was in some weird mental state, and she wanted to see her friend before she died.

So did Eddie.

They were there for 24 hours, straight.

The doctors weren't too hopeful.

As usual, doctors didn't know shit.

But the kid, she was fucking tough, she was three quarters brawling Irishman and one quarter thick-skinned Sicilian, and she made the doctors look stupid by getting better in a big hurry, and although she had been back to her day job with the Doc and college for a few weeks, tonight was her debut in her costume.

Her first night back in the saddle after having her throat slit from ear to ear in some sicko supervillain plot that nobody had been able to figure yet.

He had some ideas about who was behind it, and Jack and the Bat, they probably had the same ideas.

Now, Liv was a JLA trainee, but as Sal had trained her, and Laurie was her best friend and she worked with Jon, and went out with Danny Boy and the Inkblot in his flying tin can, she was nominally with the Watchmen, too.

When the Comedian strolled in, he picked up snatches of conversation, and they were all about one thing.

Harlequin.

"…she had to have something like five blood transfusions. She's got a very rare blood type, too, they had to bring her father out of Arkham to be the donor. And they took as much as they could from him, so the Comedian volunteered…."

Danny Boy, chattering away.

"…visited her in hospital. She thanked me profusely. Said she appreciated a man like me coming to see trash like her. Trash like her. Not her fault. She doesn't know any better. Needs our help..."

There goes the Inkblot, right to the point.

"…even I have to say, I admire her courage, and her stamina. The way she dragged herself to safety. The woman has an indomitable will to live…"

You can say that, again, Ozz-man.

"…I'm telling you, Jon, I never saw anything like this new tattoo! Ivan outdid himself. Liv told me it took him eight hours to finish it. They took a break for lunch and a break for dinner. I asked her if it was painful, and she said it wasn't eight hours she wanted to have over again, but it was necessary. It's beautiful, it's like a work of art…"

Eddie heard about the tattoo before Laurie was talking about it; he jumped into that conversation.

"You see this?" he asked.

He fished his dog tags out from under his chestplate, and showed them a small, round medallion attached to them.

"That's the same pattern!" Laurie exclaimed.

The Doc looked at it with great curiosity.

"That's a Celtic design, isn't it?" he asked.

"No. It's fuckin' Siberian. Yeah, it's Irish. The kid's grandmother, Magdelene, she gave this to my Ma, after Pop really went off and beat her half to death. It was supposed to protect her, strongest magic this side of the black stuff. Design came out of a book that had been in the family for generations. Two weeks later, Pop died. When Ma was dying, she gave it to me, and made me promise her I'd keep it on me, always. She was worried about the line of work I was in. I'm not a real superstitious guy, but I have."

Danny Boy came over.

"I heard that Liv's mother and her grandmother practised old fashioned-folk medicine. And that they both had greater than normal psi abilities." He said.

The Comedian looked at him like he was something on the bottom of his boot.

"What the fuck does that mean? You can say they were witches. Every neighbourhood has at least one good one. Hell, her grandmother's still alive, and she's still a witch, and even if she's quiet about it, so is Liv."

Eddie tucked his dog tags back into his chest plate.

The Doc was about to go on about tentative scientific support at least for folk medicine when everybody shut the fuck up, because the Harlequin strolled in.

It was the same old strut and the same old smile, and the same old costume and she was still armed to the teeth, but Laurie was right, that was some kind of a tattoo.

It was the whole pattern, intricate knotwork painstakingly tattooed in overlapping black, green and dark purple ink, in a wide band all around her neck, with a round circle of it, like the Comedian's medallion, tattooed onto her throat, dipping down to meet and encompass the runic pentacle where her collarbone met her sternum, and coming all the way down and stopping just above "You can die today—I'll die tomorrow" on her chest, between the straps of her undershirt.

The scar, which she hadn't had Ivan ink over, was a thin and angry red line from ear to ear, and the knotwork in the tattoo was woven around it.

Just like they had all looked at her, everybody pretended not to, and just said hello, casually, as Harlequin made her way to go and sit beside the Comedian, as usual.

"What the fuck is the matter with you people? C'mere, kid, look at youse, struttin' around!"

He put her in a playful headlock, and tugged lightly on her pigtails.

"Lemme fuckin' go! Lemme go, goddamnit!" she laughed.

"C'mon kid, fight me! Youse can get out of it. I know ya can."

She could, too, laughing and pushing her shoulder against his chest like she was a linebacker for the Jets.

"You're goin ass over teacups t'day, Mr. Blake!" Liv announced.

Somehow, she did manage to get out of the headlock.

"Comedian, do you think that's…appropriate?" Ozymandias sniffed.

"What? I been horsin' around with this kid since she was a rugrat? You gotta dirty mind, Veidt."

Everybody sat down.

They were all waiting around for something, and something turned out to be Hollis Mason and Nelly showing up, in costume.

The Boy Scout got up, and stood by the chalkboard, and commenced with making a speech.

"As I'm sure you all know by now, last month, one of our members, the Harlequin, was criminally assaulted by villains as yet unknown to us, while in pursuit of her duties. She was assaulted, kidnapped, tortured, had her throat slashed from ear to ear and was then thrown from a moving car and dumped on the street, in Bushwick. Miraculously, she survived. This is her first night back in costume, after battling back from the point of death. So, let's all try and put our differences aside, tonight. I've invited Nelly and Hollis to the meeting tonight, in the hopes that we can all be inspired, by their presence, and Liv's courage and determination, to really get something accomplished. Did you want to say anything, Liv?"

"What?"

Danny Boy looked like he was faltering, so the kid went to his aid.

"Sure, Dan. I got something to say."

She got up and went to the podium, and put her hands on the outside of it, so you could see the right hand that said "Hell" across the knuckles and the left hand that said "Fire"

And the tattoo of the skull and crossbones on the back of her right hand.

"Well, first, I wanna thank Mr. Blake for savin' my life in the hospital. I won't forget that. And Hollis and Nelly for coming, tonight, and for alla you who came ta see me while I was in the hospital, thanks. Other than the obvious, though, you all know how it is in the street. Getting your throat cut is kind of like hello, right? All it shows me is that I'm doing my job right, because some motherfuckers want me to stop doing it. Yeah, well, fat fuckin' chance. I mean, you can go ahead and hang me up by my wrists and give me electric shocks and shit, and beat me with a rubber hose and shot like that, fuck you, if you wanna stop me, you'll hafta kill me. I'm not sure why it didn't kill me. My mother, she would have said it was fate. But, as a scientist and a materialist, I'm not sure I see fate that way. I think you make you own fate. At least, I make mine. You're either the master of your own fate, or it's the master of you."

She turned her left hand over so that you could see the all-seeing eye tattooed into the palm. "I decided I wasn't going to die that night. Yeah, I got help from some people I'd helped, but I coulda given up the ghost. It woulda been easy. I was so sick and in so much pain, all I wanted to do was close my eyes. But I didn't. I held out. I fought it. So I could get better and put my costume back on and get out there on the street again. I think that's where we should be. Because that's where the trouble is. It's not in this meeting room, or in your hideout, or on a map, or in a report, or on a screen. Trouble's in the street. Innocent people are getting mugged, robbed, beaten, raped, fucked over, cheated, lied to and screwed, blued and tattooed out there. Maybe they're not all the kind of people you see in church on Sunday, but they're not badguys. The badguys, who aren't all supervillains, are sticking it to them. Trouble's in the street. That's where we should be. That's where I'll be tomorrow. And the next day. And they can fucking well beat me and stab me and shoot me and slit my throat and club me with rebar, and until I'm dead, I'm gonna keep coming back. Because I'm a mask. That's my job. It's not just what I do, its' who the fuck I am. And if it's not hwo the fuck you are, hang up your fuckin' tights an' don't quit your day job. That's all I have to say."

She turned her hand over again, and put her hands together grasping the end of the podium, so you could clearly see the word "Hellfire"

Mason was on his feet clapping, and so was Nelly, and the Boy Scout.

Ozzy was looking at the kid like she had ten heads.

"Harlequin, was there a significance to what you were doing with your hands?" he asked.

"Sure there was. Before I use the hand of Hell to deal Death, I use the Third Eye to look through the Fire and know if the killing is what justice calls for. I never let one take over for the other. Because that would be crossing the line." She replied.

Ozymandias looked shocked.

He liked to think there was nothing to the kid but booze, brawls and balling; it always pissed him off when she showed signs of forethought and intelligence.

Liv came and sat down with Eddie, again.

"That was a good speech, kid."

"I meant it."

"I know you did."

"Wait a minute. Before I go back to the shop, and let you all get on with business, I'd like to say something. Is that alright, Dan?"

"Certainly, Hollis. Please do."

Mason?

Mason was going to do something right for a change?

Well, the kid did a lot of work out of his garage, so he knew she wasn't as black as they painted.

"Adrian, you look surprised that Trivelino didn't just come up here and ask someone to get her a shot and a beer. Now, I've known Liv since she was 11, and my assistant mechanic, Joe Mac was 12. That's when they started their love affair with cars. Now I could stand here and say good things about Liv all day, but we're not supposed to be concerned with Trivelino J. Napier's personal life. Our business is with the Harlequin, and how she does her job as a mask. We're not here to judge each other about what we do in our free time, or who our families are. That's none of our business. Hell, you can ask the Comedian, some of us original members of the Minutemen came from some crazy circumstances, and did some things out of costume that most people would consider a helluva lot less normal than driving fast cars, going to bars, and meeting people of the opposite sex. What's more, if Liv was a man, none of you, or any other mask would think twice about it. But, as it stands, I hear things about the Harlequin that I don't like. People in this room, even, her fellow team-mates have used the ugliest words a man can use to describe a woman, some of the ugliest things one person can call another. I don't think that's right. I had my opinions about some of my fellow Minutemen, but, even when I wrote my book, I kept most of them to myself. And I've got one more thing to say. I may not be as young and as strong as I used to be, but the next time I hear "drunk", "whore", "slut", "thug" or anything like it come out of any mask's mouth about the Harlequin, I'm going to punch him in it. She's a good mask, and a good girl, and that ought to be the end of it."

Mason gave a little resolute nod, and started getting ready to leave.

Eddie looked over at the kid and she just about had tears in her eyes.

"Yeah, an' that goes triple for me! For once Mason, I'm with youse." He echoed.

Laurie jumped up.

"Yeah, an' I gotta say, for once I agree with Eddie! I mean, you guys have to get with the times. Women are allowed to be seen and heard and do what they want. It's a free country for everybody, now, not just people with three legs." She added.

Blushing, Hollis Mason took his leave.

"Why are you all looking at me?" Ozymandias insisted.

"Oh, I dunno, Ozzy. Maybe because you're the one flappin' your jaws alla time about shit that don't concern you." The Comedian piped in.

"I'm entitled to my opinion."

"Yeah, well your fuckin' opinion sucks, an' its got nothin' to do with business, an' you oughta keep it to your fuckin' self!" Eddie barked.

That was when the Boy Scout started calling for order, and Eddie sat down, and picked up his _New York Post_.

He wasn't interested in anything that moron had to say.

"Geez, I can't believe you an' Hollis went to bat for me like that. Especially considerin' that I am alla those things." Liv said.

"Shut up about that! Kid, who the hell convinced youse that you was lower than whale shit?"

"It's nice of you, Mr. Blake, but I know what I am."

The Comedian put his paper down.

"I know what you are, too. You're a certified genius, you're the Harlequin, and you're Merrie Damiano's little girl. An' if I hear you callin' yourself a drunk, a slut, a whore or a thug, I'll slap you in the chops."

"I'd like to see you try it, Mr. Blake."

"Kid, if you're gonna call me out, maybe you should start callin' me Eddie."

Around then, the meeting degenerated into the usual shouting match, this one starring Laurie and Ozzy, but the Comedian and the Harlequin weren't paying much attention.

She started telling him about her tattoo.

"It took 8 hours. But I knew Ivan could do it. I just brought the book and I showed him the design, and after I explained it to him, he really understood. This was the big one, Mr. Blake. I never came so close to death, before."

"It sure was, kid. I'm just sorry your first night back in costume hadda be for this shit. They don't even care."

"Not many masks do care about me. They'd just as soon see me dead as alive. Jesus, look at this bullshit. I got suited up for this?"

"Fuck this shit. C'mon, kid. Let's go to Grossmann's. Then, maybe we'll go to Trivelino Mac's, and have a few beers. I can't sit through this shit."

Meanwhile, Laurie wasn't putting up with any bullshit.

"…fuck you, Adrian! And if you're on his side, you know what, Jon? Fuck you, double! Don't bother calling me this weekend, I'm telling Ma to take the phone off the hook! Where are you two going?"

"Grossmann's. I'm not having the kid sit here and listen to you fuckers argue over bullshit when she should be trying to figure out who took her, and why. But, ya know what? Fuck you assholes. Me and the Bat will sort that one out. And the kid. C'mon, Liv. Let's get the fuck outa here."

"Oh yeah? Wait for me!"

Laurie stormed out with them.

"Look, if you're going after whoever tried to kill Liv, count me in! Jon can't ever take my side! Oh no! What Adrian says is right. Adrian is always right. Adrian ought to grow a dick and come out of the closet, like Nelly has. At least to us. The smartest man in the world! He's also the biggest prick in the universe! He almost makes you look good, Eddie."

The Comedian laughed.

"Lar, how come the only time ya don't hate me is when you're mad at somebody else?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's because I get sentimental about when I was a kid and I didn't know what an asshole you were."

"Ask your mother. I've always been an asshole."

The door opened, again, and Rorschach came out.

"Comedian, wait. Daniel and I want to help you and the Batman find the scum who assaulted Miss Napier. An attack on one of us is an assault on all of us. Is there a meeting scheduled?"

"Batcave. Monday night. Ten."

"We'll be there."

* * *

**Grossmann's Diner, 5****th**** Avenue, Manhattan. Later that night**

The kid and her new tattoo were the toast of Grossmann's.

Paulie, who had a few tattoos, himself, started leaping around and showing off his tattoos his father gave him, and a lot of the regulars came over to congratulate her on her recovery.

The Doc showed up, contrite, to take Laurie home to Sally's place around 11, and said he would also be at the Batcave at ten for the meeting.

That's when Eddie figured he and the kid would take off for Mac's.

She went out the door first, and Cap grabbed her sleeve.

"What happens Monday at ten at the Batcave?"

"Coalition to figure out who took me and what they wanted." Liv told him.

"And you weren't asking me to come? I'll be there. Now, Liv, now if you get this big lummox, here, drunk and have your way with him, remember, be gentle. He's getting to be an old man." Steve joked.

"Gentle, my ass. He gets it the hard way." Liv said.

She winked at Eddie and walked out the door.

"Jeez, Eddie, I was kidding!" Cap told him.

"She wasn't. Don't gimme that look, Steve. She'll go up to her room over the bar, and I'll go home."

Captain America laughed.

He put his arm around his old friend's shoulders.

"Sure. Sure you will. You're doomed, Eddie. Let me tell you a secret that everybody knows. Liv's just crazy about you. Now, most of the time when a young girl is just crazy about an older man, when he's somebody she can look up to, somebody who'll take care of her, it's endearing and sweet. But, with Liv, it's heavy on the crazy part. She's had all she can stand of you dangling yourself in front of her like a carrot, and she can't stand anymore. That woman means business."

"What, you're tellin' me if I know what's good for me I'll shut up and take it like a man? What's she gonna do? Put a gun to my head and tell me it can go easy for me or it can go hard?" Eddie joked.

"I don't think it'll come to that. Do you?"

"Hey, Steve, sure she's a good lookin' girl, an' I've heard the same rumours about her everybody has. But she's crazy. You think I wanna wade into the middle of crazier than a shithouse rat, when I could have any broad I wanted?"

"Yeah, Eddie. I think that's exactly what you want to do, because the only women you really like are the ones who are as crazy as you are. I'll see what's left of you, around."

(_Author's Note: Oh no, what the hell is going on? Have these people who have secret identities and wear masks and practise vigilantism been decieving us all along? Wait. That's not too surprising. But, just what kind of surprises lie ahead? Will they be dirty? Sexy? Violent? With this crew, you bet.)_


	2. A Witch's Promise

**Chapter Two: A Witch's Promise**

**Trivelino Mac's, Brooklyn, New York, 1968**

**I: Eddie**

Life can be a funny thing.

Time, for example.

Seven years isn't a helluva long time between 37 and 44.

But between 11 and 18?

That's the difference between taking a little kid to get a Coke at the drugstore, and going out for a beer at a bar with a grown woman who's got some grown-up ideas about you.

Or, in the kid's case, a whole keg.

Eddie heard she was a drunk, she liked to kid about it, herself, but he didn't realise she really was a fucking alcoholic until he went to the bar with her, and she started putting it away.

The kid drank the way his mother and father had, and they were both old time shanty Irish drunks.

It was a shot and a beer and a shot and a beer and a shot and a beer, in rapid succession.

She must have pounded down five or six beers and as many shots before she started to even sound a little tipsy.

And the whole time, she smoked one cigarette after the other, a shot and a beer and a cigarette.

Talking to her was like talking to somebody who'd been a mask for ten years, not three, but he'd known Liv all her life and it didn't surprise him.

She could talk to you like she was 57 even when she was 11. Not to mention the fact that she could stay lucid after drinking as much as she did either showed just how smart she was, or that she was a serious drunk.

Maybe a little of both.

Eddie, he was putting it away along with her, until he remembered something he learned at his mother's kitchen table when he was 14.

Drinking with a drunk was a zero sum game.

One thing about when you were drinking with the kid, it was hard to say when, because she didn't know the meaning of the word.

Eddie called it quits when he got up to take a piss and had to steady himself on the bar before he walked to the can.

He realised he was pretty goddamn drunk, and although Liv was still going strong, he called it quits on her part, too.

"Hey. Take it easy. Call it a night, huh? Whaddya do, kid? Drink till you can hardly crawl up the stairs?"

"Sometimes."

He wasn't too drunk to walk, and he wasn't puking on his shoes drunk, or double vision drunk, but he was definitely too fucked up to drive.

"Jesus, kid. My head's swimmin'. Remind me not to wait for you to decide to say when."

"C'mon, Mr. Blake. I gotta couch in the corner of my flop, upstairs. You take the bed. C'mon, it's alright."

He let her lead him up the stairs, and into the room.

It was your typical flop room out of central casting.

The room was just the way he'd expected it to be, right down to the stubborn cold, the arthritic, labouring old radiator, and the harshly twinkling neon lights coming in through the curtainless window with the half-broken Venetian blinds.

Except she had a record rack and a cheap stereo there, too, and a ratty couch beside it.

There was an end table, with a lamp on it, and also an open bottle of Southern Comfort. The room was fairly tidy, but there was a trash can crammed with bottles, beer cans, and take-out bags and boxes, and the several ashtrays around the room were full of butts.

The room smelled like booze and smoke, but you didn't have to be Wolverine to smell the kid all over everything.

He could see one of her mask fuckbooks lying open on the bed; this was where she came to do her dirty work, alone or with some guy, and it hung heavy in the air, that heavy, lingering smell like sex and sweat and sweet, intoxicating teenage pussy.

No smell in the world like it, beats even new car, any day of the week.

The room was full of it; the air was full of it; there probably wasn't a woman in the world who smelled like savage, sexy, horny Liv.

Eddie knew that if he didn't want to get himself mixed up with the most homicidal hellcat in New York State, it was time to go.

Flee.

Sleep in the car if he had to.

But.

But maybe she was a little less drunk that him, or maybe a little more, or maybe she had a plan and he didn't, because all of the sudden his back was pushed up against the door, because she had shoved him against it.

Hard.

It was in that moment he realised he'd been set up.

Like a bunch of fucking bowling pins.

Kid set me up and then she knocked me down.

She knew I wouldn't expect her to be able to hold that much liquor, she figured I'd be boozing right along with her, because I wouldn't realise she could have drunk Thor under the table until I was so drunk myself that all I would want to do was go someplace quiet and lie down.

And she was counting on the fact that even if I was too drunk to make it home, if I was sober enough to stand up and walk, then I was sober enough to get it up.

A trap, and I walked right into it.

"What the hell are you…HEY!"

His metal codpiece landed on the floor with a loud clang, as the kid dropped to her knees on the floor mat.

She went down like the fucking Titanic, you could goddamn well bet she had this all planned out.

"God _damn_, now, you're a _big_ sunnuvabitch."

She laughed, and leaned forward.

What was he supposed to do, make her stop?

Yeah, right.

Like there was a guy in the world who wasn't a fag who was going to say to a broad, hey, you, quit sucking my dick or I'll call the police.

Besides, he'd had his eye on her since the first time he saw her in costume, and the kid, she'd wanted a piece of him since she was 13, so, hell, why not?

Let her have her fun.

And she was good.

Damn good.

Eddie he could feel his eyes starting to cross, and a deep moan came up out of his chest.

He ran one hand through her hair, her red, red hair, and pulled her zipper down on her boiler suit with the other, and slipped it under the bulletproof vest and the undershirt.

She had a fine pair of big tits, and her nipples were as hard as the tips of the hollow point bullets that she wore in the gunbelt around her hips.

Moaned in her throat, sucked him harder.

Squirmed against his legs; she was so hot she was trying to hump his leg like a dog.

Eddie unbuckled her gunbelt, and yanked the zipper on her boiler suit open all the way.

She had those goddamn boxers on, but it made it easier in a way, because he could fit his hand into the slit at the front of the boxers, the tips of his fingers brushing damp whorls of what he figured was red hair, on their way to nuzzle at her hot little button.

"Oh shit, honey, you're so wet!" he breathed.

Her little bush was on fire, and she was just riding his hand, hard, desperate.

It wasn't what she wanted, but she'd take it.

Christ, how he wanted to tear her clothes off and lift her up under her fine big ass and slide her hot little snatch down on his cock.

_Eddie, this is your brain. You go ahead and play with her tight little pussy, and she started this, so you can let her suck you off, but do not, I repeat, do not fuck this broad._

_ She's bad, bad, bad news._

He was thrusting into her mouth, now, and she was sucking him hard, squeezing his ass and just grinding herself down on his hand.

Wanted to get off, any way she could.

She stopped for a minute, crying out in cheated frustration.

_Eddie…_

The Comedian, however, had become very good, over the years, at getting the annoying little Jiminy fucking Cricket in his head to shut the fuck up and leave him alone.

"No, no, don't yell like that, baby. I know what you need."

Eddie scooped her up off the floor, and carried her across the room, and, tossing the book aside, he put her down on the rumpled bed, and started taking off his costume.

She had hers off, first.

He wondered if his eyes were as wide as hers were, watching him, drinking him all in with undisguised lustful glee.

"You like what youse see, doll?"

"I'd like it better if youse brought it over a little closer."

The Comedian certainly liked what he saw.

She was 18, now, she was a grown woman, and fuck, did she look it.

A lot of guys, they liked these skinny broads, but Eddie liked a woman who had something to hang onto, and the kid had it in spades.

Not to mention she was a real redhead, and he wanted to get lost in all her long red hair, which, freed from the ponytails fell all over him, in his mad, mad rush to get his fingers and his lips and his tongue all over her stupendous fucking tits and her nipples like pink gumdrops, before, growling like a wild beast, he lingered over her rounded belly before diving into her sweet teenage pussy.

Pushed her big, round, creamy-white thighs open further and got her legs around his shoulders, he got his fingers in her and his mouth on her, and she tasted as good as her whole fucking room smelled.

She came hard, and she didn't stop coming, her wide hips bucking and rolling, and while she was still going off he slid his body up so that his achingly hard cock was just about ready to slide right into her.

And he brought his mouth down on hers in a fierce kiss as she brought her legs up around him, and kept those hips bucking and rolling to his rhythm as he fucked her.

First long, and slow until he cracked all that macho bullshit right off her, and she was just a woman, a crazy, lethal, horny devil of a woman who just wanted him, needed him to be the biggest, baddest, meanest son of a bitch in the whole wide world.

"Fuck, Eddie, ohhhhh, fuck…"

That was the first time she ever called him by his first name, and she just cooed it so sweet and dirty and lowdown that the Comedian thought he was going to lose his mind.

"How do you want it, honey?" he gasped.

"Oooo….Oooo….ooooo, Eddie…oooo, harder….ooo, harder, faster…more…more…ya sunnuvabitch!"

So he gave it to her hard, and fast, and the headboard of the beat the shit out of the wall, and the mattress screamed for mercy, and he was sweating now like a punk who was trying to get away from him.

But she was holding him tighter in her arms, and tighter in her legs, and tighter in her little red snapper, pumping her hips up and down his cock and just cooing his name over and over again, her pretty Irish face bright with her thousand watt smile, then just crying out, louder, and louder.

Until she was fucking screaming, screaming and pounding on the mattress and coming like a goddamn speeding freight train, and he was yelling too, bellowing his fucking head off and coming inside her, once, no twice, who's counting, both of them leaping and jerking around on the poor old bed, clutching at each other and, at the end of it, strange enough, laughing.

Eddie rolled onto his back, gasping for air and laughing, and the kid, she was laughing too, lying next to him all naked and sweaty and satisfied.

"Jesus Christ, Eddie, Jesus Christ in Heaven, that's the first fuckin' time in my life anything was ever as good as I dreamed it would be."

Eddie wanted to say something in reply, but he didn't have his breath, yet.

He heard she never laid down with a man after they fucked, but while she wasn't making any effort to spring up, he rolled her up against his chest and put his leg around her.

She wasn't getting away from his so easily.

"You ain't goin' anywhere, honey, and I don't fuckin' sleep on no couch." He told her. "Lemme go, Eddie. Jesus, I gotta pee. I dunno how many goddamn beers I had, I'll piss the fuckin' bed. I'm comin' back, I promise."

She did come back, and he was sleepy as hell all the sudden, and they moved around until they got comfortable, and then he pulled up the covers.

He hit the light switch on the wall, plunging them into darkness.

"That's what it's supposed to feel like, baby." He crowed.

"Ya ruined me, Eddie. I'll never fuck again without thinkin, shit, this guy ain't a patch on Eddie Blake's ass." She replied.

"I like the way you say my name, doll. This ain't the last time I'll be makin' you scream it."

"Ya mean that, Eddie?"

She said it in this surprised, wistful kind of way that made Eddie want to murder at least the last ten guys she'd slept with that treated her like a dirty fucking whore.

"Sure I mean it. Go ta sleep."

She wasn't supposed to like to be held, but when he held her, she fell right to sleep.

Eddie wasn't the kind of man who second-guessed himself.

He put a lot of thought into doing what he did before he did it, so why the fuck bother doing it all over again after a thing was done?

And, he knew, he was probably off the hook, anyway.

No man ever treated the kid like he ought to, anyway; he knew that because she liked to complain about it.

Oh, she had a smile on her face when she said it, and she played it off like it didn't bother her, but, unless she was laying it on thick, that shit would bother anybody.

If a broad treated him like that, he had his fucking pride, he's knock the bitch out.

But the kid, she wouldn't even know where to get a guy who wasn't a lowdown piece of shit, and she wasn't your average teenybopper in bell-bottoms cracking her gum, not to mention that in all their hurry to teach her how to be a good mask instead of a bad mask, nobody ever stopped and told her how to act like a woman.

So, Liv wouldn't expect anything more from him, she wouldn't change the way she acted towards him when she saw him next; she was a mean little bastard who didn't know any better than that you took what you wanted and moved on.

Just like somebody he used to know.

But, even though he could have skated on her, that was the last thing he wanted to do.

Five years since the crazy kid put her paws on him in the front set of his Caddy at the drive in, and when she was 13 he yelled at her for it, and it was crazy and sick and bad, but she was all grown up now.

She had been these past two years, since she put on a mask.

It was too late to go back an undo what he'd done, too late to pretend that he hadn't caught a spark of her hellfire and was burning, himself, too late to put his pants on and say "Seeya" and leave and pretend he didn't give a shit when he knew he did.

A lot of guys did that to her.

And everybody, no matter how hard they are, they got a heart to break and a soul to crush, and Eddie had lived long enough to know the kinds of things a man could say and do to a woman to make her feel dirty on the inside, like there was nothing that could ever get her clean.

A lot of guys, but not him.

And she was surprised when she woke up in the morning and he was still there.

"Eddie? You didn't leave?"

"Of course I fuckin' didn't. Listen, kid. Just shut your yap and listen to me. I ain't gonna wipe my dick on the curtains an' steal a beer from your fridge an' eat the last slice of cold pizza from the box, an' leave. Okay?"

She looked at him like he had ten heads.

"You mean it?"

"I mean it, kid."

"Because, listen, you don't have an obligation to me or anythin'."

The Comedian laughed.

"Canya cut that macho bullshit for a minute kid? I know I got to you, I was there, remember? An' you know youse got to me, so why get noble about it? Lemme tell you somethin'. I was pretty drunk last night, but I was sober enough, if I wanted to, to tell you to get lost. I don't just hop on every broad who gives me the bedroom eyes, yunno. If I fuck a girl, it's because I want to, not because she's got a pussy and plans. And since when have I given a shit about my obligations? I'd say I won't come back if ya don't want me to, but that would be a dirty fuckin' lie. If you wasn't innarested, ya shoulda kept your hands to yourself."

"You ain't mad, are you?"

"Kid, didn't you ever hear of just askin' nice? What I'm tryna tellya is, you didn't hafta get me drunk, alright?"

"You're a good liar, Eddie."

"Don't sell yourself short, kid. You ain't half as low as you think you are. You act like you're some fucked out drunken old whore with her tits down to her knees, lint in her pockets an' air between her ears. Lemme tellla somethin'. Guy walks into a bar, he sees you, an' you're lookin' at him an' smilin', givin' him that thousand watt grin, he takes a second look. Sure, he sees you gotta lotta ink on youse. Sits down with youse, maybe he can see you got a few scars he can see. But he can also see that you're real young, and real clean. You got a pretty face, clear skin, you're well fed, your clothes are a little messy, but they're in good shape. And you're drinkin' expensive booze. That tells him you ain't no old junkie, an' ya got some dough, so you ain't lookin' in his pants for his wallet. Then ya start talkin'. You gotta good sense a humour, you seem like a smart broad. He figures, whoever this broad is, she's young and clean and she lives someplace nice, an' she can afford her act. I wonder what it is. Then, he takes a second look at those tits, and, you got him. You don't need to get some guy drunk to fuck you, kid. You got a lot more goin for you than you thing you do. In fact, next time, I wouldn't mind you bein' sober, too, or as close to it as you can get."

"Next time?"

"Yeah. Next time. Which, if youse don't go jumpin outa bed like your ass is on fire and you're head's catchin', is gonna be real soon."

For just a moment, he saw the chink in her armor, then she played it off.

"You would be the only crazy motherfucker crazy enough to come back for more! Don't you know I could just fly off the handle, one day, and kill you?" She said.

"You know what my father told me, right before he died? He said he'd rather die at the hands of his own kids than some punk in the street, or in the chair. Well, if I gotta die hard, kid, I'd rather have you take me out than some punk in the street."

"That goes double for me, Eddie. The devil ya know, right?"

"Somethin' like that, kid. An' ya know somethin'? After, I'm takin' youse home. Right in the fuckin' front door."

* * *

The Comedian rolled up to Wayne Manor and shocked the hell out of everybody.

"Trivelino, go to your rooms."

"What, Pop? Why the hell—"

"GO!"

Liv looked at her stepfather like he'd grown an extra head, but then she just shrugged.

"Okay, Pop, alright. Whatever you say. Jesus."

The kid went in another direction, and the Bat gave Eddie a real dirty look.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he snapped.

That was an accusation.

"It's Thursday, ain't it?"

"It's been Thursday, every week, for the last three years! Where the fuck have you been? And you've got a lot of balls, Blake, bringing her home like this!"

"Like what? I'm tryna do the decent thing here, Wayne. You may not think I'm the best guy in the world for your little girl, but you're lookin' at the only man in New York who wants ta try an' do right by her!"

"Oh, really? Then where have you been since she put on a mask? Where?"

"Where have I been? I been unwilling to get in a car, alone, with your crazy kid when she was underage, that's where I've been! I been holdin' up her end at Watchmen meetings, I been givin' her my fuckin' blood when she was dyin', I been makin' sure I ain't just the next Saturday night screw in the back of the Buick before the kid was even 18 years old!"

"So? Why should you care? Nobody else did!" Wayne commented, bitterly.

"That bad?"

"Worse!"

Bruce Wayne sighed, the sigh of a man who has bitten off way more than he can chew.

"Why should I scream at you? They say it's any port in a storm, and I'm at sea. You know was well as I do that Liv drinks like a fish, swears like a pirate, drives like a maniac and screws like a sailor. Every willowy young mask groupie in town with hair down to his ass all stuffed into his pants like a sack of potatoes. Any tough guy in a bar who's old enough to be her father that can drink as much as she can. She doesn't care."

"That's because she doesn't know any better. Who was gonna tell her? You? Jack? Sally? That's a laugh."

"But you don't know what it's like. If she was a boy, it would still be difficult, but in that she's not, it's much worse. You know the things people say about her behind her back. And I know why she's still a JLA trainee. Nobody seems to remember that she works for Dr. Manhattan, that she graduated from college at 18. That she's a damn good detective, and a damn good mask, who's been wounded badly in the line of duty three times in three years. All they know is that she's Jack Napier's daughter, and that makes her no good. And that she's a drunk. And a whore. Oh, they use nicer words than that, sometimes, but I can read between the lines. I guess I should be grateful that somebody else gives a damn. I can't handle her, anymore."

"Jesus, Bruce, ya did your best. What were you gonna do with her? Tie her to a chair? Lock her up in a bunker? Ya done good, ya know. I'm surprised she still lives here, at all."

"Well, after she got kicked out of the NYU dorms last year, she wanted to move into an apartment in the Village, but I wouldn't let her. You can only imagine all the kinds of hell she would have raised! So, we made a compromise. I had the old servant's quarters renovated for her; she's got a separate entrance from the rest of the house. And I spent a small fortune on expanding, partitioning and renovating a corner of the Batcave that wasn't in use for her to have a workspace. I was on pins and needles she'd try to move out when she turned 18, but, with Mac giving her the room over the bar and all the trouble I went to for her, here, she's decided to stay put."

"You shoulda touched Jack for some of the dough. He's loaded."

"I did. I footed the bill for renovations, and he was responsible for contents. What are your intentions, Eddie? I need to know."

"My intentions are to try an' keep that kid this side of the dirt long enough for her to figure out what the fuck is going on. And prove to her she ain't no fuckin' whore. An' I'll fuckin' rip the lungs out of anybody who tries to prove me wrong."

Bruce Wayne sighed, again, this time, resignedly.

"Jesus, why should I care? For one thing I've got no business looking down my nose at you, do I? And I need all the help with Trivelino I can get. Welcome back to the show that never ends. The servant's entrance is all the way at the back of the manor, down a flight of steps. Knock. Loudly. Oh, and one more thing. Dick lives there with her. They're not in the same bedroom, anymore, but you know how it is. That's his little sister."

"Yeah, I know. I'll make sure he knows I got good intentions. You do know I don't think she is, right? A drunk. Or a whore. "

"Well, she is a drunk."

"That's what they make rehab for, Bats. Don't worry. We'll straighten the kid out."

"Has she admitted it to you, yet?"

"What?"

"That she knows exactly who abducted her."

"No. But if she don't tell me, she'll admit it to you. Or Jack. You got any new leads?"

"None so far. As soon as she tells me what she knows, or I dig up anything else, I'll be in touch."

She stood in the doorway and looked at him like he had ten heads.

"You were bein' straight with me at Mac's, huh, Eddie?" she asked.

"What, didja think you was gonna get rid of me that easy? You still crazy about movies?"

He walked in, and she stood in the doorway a long time before she closed it.

Meanwhile, Eddie settled himself in on her couch, taking a look around the room.

It was lined with bookcases.

"Jesus, I could sit here till I was fuckin' eighty an' never read alla these books. An' it ain't like I'm fuckin' illiterate."

He picked one up from the table.

"The _Invaders and the War_, huh? You done readin' this one? I been meanin' ta look at it. I hear it doesn't paint me as black as the one that came out a coupla years ago did."

He opened it up to a random page.

"…in Sophie Grossmann, the angry young superhero found a partner in crime, as it were…"

That wasn't too bad.

"Go ahead, borrow it. Well, I was just gonna make somethin' ta eat for me an' Dick. I guess I'll make more."

The Comedian leaned over and snapped the TV on, and began turning the dial.

Right on cue, Grayson appeared.

Just like Eddie always had when some guy came around to see one of his little sisters.

Except Eddie got the idea that Liv didn't usually bring the guys she fucked around where she lived.

"What are you doing here?" Grayson demanded.

"Visitin' your sister."

"You mean, like a normal guy? Like you're not ashamed to be seen with her in daylight?"

"Yeah. Like I'm somebody she wants ta know for more than an hour who ain't gonna steal the stereo an' the TV while she's in the can."

"Holy cow!" Grayson exclaimed.

Then, he gave the Comedian a dirty look.

"You better not break my sister's heart. I don't care who you are, I'll kick your ass."

Eddie just laughed.

"You won't hafta. She'd kill me, and laugh with you about it two hours later." He chuckled.

"Kill you? You really think she could?"

Eddie continued to laugh.

"Your sister could kill fuckin' Superman. Without Kryptonite. If she was mad enough, she'd find a way."

* * *

After the movie, Eddie took Liv home, to his apartment.

On the way back from the drive-in out in Jersey, the kid fell asleep in the car.

Just like when she was actually a kid.

When she was asleep, and she wasn't swaggering around and waving her arms and yelling and cursing and stomping in her big boots, you could see that she was just a little thing, five feet and small change, weighing in at a buck forty five, maybe a buck fifty.

The Comedian wasn't a superstitious man; he was, by nature, a fatalist.

He had sent his father to Hell, and every lowlife like Mickey Blake that he sent after, he sent them right to the Old Man, to stoke the fires under them all that much hotter, and on the day he died he'd be in Hell right with him, poker-in-hand.

Some people thought that he might be saved by what was good in him; most people, including Eddie, himself, they weren't holding their breath.

He never had much to live for, on his own.

His daughter wasn't his, the children he raised were his siblings, not his kids, Sally, who he loved, she wasn't his either and she never would be.

Broads, they liked him because he was the Comedian; he could get laid any day in his costume, and out of it, well, he was a big bastard and he wasn't bad-looking; getting a broad for the night was never any trouble.

And then there was Liv.

Her life was a fucking train wreck, and here he was, standing on the tracks like he was fucking Superman, standing in front of her in the bright lights of the oncoming engine.

And even if he managed to help her straighten out and fly right, the only reward he might get for it on some bad, drunken night might be two in the head, a machete through the guts, or a broken neck.

She'd be sorry he was dead, but he'd be dead all the same.

And trouble?

Eddie was enough trouble to himself when he was an angry, violent young pup, but those years were long behind him.

He wasn't a punk kid in a yellow boiler suit who couldn't see any further over the horizon than his next fuck or his next fight, scraping and scrambling to feed his dead parents' family and somehow get by.

Shit, he was the Comedian, All-American Hero, who had fought the Japs and the Nazis, side by side with Captain America and Wolverine.

Director of Covert Operations for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Colonel Edward M. Blake, USMC Special Forces.

He'd made his life and he'd made it the hard way out of the mess that punk kid he'd used to be left for him.

Why the fuck should he want to go back in the trenches to pull another crazy, violent, angry young pup out of them?

Why the fuck did he care?

Why the fuck did she?

A witch's promise.

Merrie was a witch, too.

She put a spell on Jack that he could never break and never wanted to.

His Ma had told him, a witch isn't a witch because she can mix medicines and potions, she's a witch because her third eye, her mind's eye, is open a lot wider than other people's is, and she can see a lot more.

It's open all the time, and it can see the past and the future all at once, it can see to where they come together.

A witch can see right into the heart of things, and she can see her fate.

She can bend it, and get it to do what she wants, and when she's seen something or someone in her fate, then she can bend and shape fate around them, too.

That's a witch's promise.

And a witch's promise can't be broken.

Eddie reached into his jacket pocket for a flask and took a drink; then he lit a fresh cigar, and shook his head, like he was shaking those thoughts away.

It was late, and he was tired, and it was only going to be one day a week.

She was young, and she was pretty, and she liked him for who he was, not in spite of himself; the kid was good company and she liked fucking the way most women liked chocolate and diamonds.

Wasn't that good enough?

If she was a little rough, so what?

She wasn't a fucking beauty queen, she was Crazy Jack Napier's daughter, and a tough mask who did the dirty jobs on the mean streets, what was she going to be?

A candy ass?

Besides, he liked her, and he wanted her, and why the fuck, for once in his life, would it be such a goddamn crime against humanity for him to have something he wanted?

The Bat, he had a point about her.

She was a good girl, Merrie's daughter.

Good as gold.

"Wake up, kid. We're home."

She yawned, and stretched, and squinted, her eyes filled with sleep.

"Huh? What? But Eddie, this is your place."

"Yeah. I know. You're stayin' here, t'night."

"I am? Why?"

"Because it's Thursday. Your night off. And I'll be seein' youse every Thursday, from now on."

They got out of the car, and, she followed him into the building.

"Really, Eddie? No shit? I get my own day of the week? Like Sophie Grossmann? Why?"

They were quiet in the elevator, and when they got to the apartment she was still all full of questions, he could tell by the look on her face, but he figured locking the door and pulling her as close as he could get her and just about kissing her lips off was a good answer.

She caught fire real fast, squirming against him, but when he had to come up for air, she looked strangely confused.

Eddie wanted to laugh, but he thought if he did, she'd break his nose.

"That's why."

He picked her up like she was made out of fluff, and carried her into his bedroom.

He really gave it to her, put his mark on her, he put his heart and his soul in it, along with his ass, because you sure as hell weren't going to explain anything to her with words.

And she did it a whole bunch of times, cooed his name, and she was sweet and dirty and hot, and by the time she was done with him, Eddie figured she put her fire on him so that it would never burn off again.

Not that he wanted it to.

She was quiet, for awhile, smoking in the dark.

"Eddie, can I stay?"

"Sure you can stay, kid. I brought youse here, didn't I? Do whatcha want. Take a shower. Make a sandwich. Have a drink. Not fifty drinks, though. Knock yourself out."

"You already knocked me out."

"Yeah, well, I'm hungry. I'm gonna go make some bacon an' eggs."

He got out of bed.

"Now? It's three in the morning."

"So? You got no work or school tomorrow, right?"

"How'd you know."

"You're like the army, kid, ya always do shit the same way, alla time."

She sat there, eating bacon and eggs, with one of his t-shirts on, banging her heels against the chair.

"Ya know, Eddie, I never met a cat who, yunno, played it straight with me."

"Yeah, I figured they was all a parade of yellow little bastards an' mean old drunks who blew their loads on the sheets, wiped their dicks on the curtains and left you lyin' there thinkin' at least they didn't steal your money."

"Pretty much."

Eddie shook his head.

"Kid, how come you let men treat youse like that? I mean, I seen your handiwork, out on the street. Guys lyin' there dead with an unfired gun in their hands and their neck broke and a look like 'What the fuck was that' still on their face. But then, what, you go to some dive and pick up some asshole and put up with him treatin' you like a two dollar whore? Whaddya get out of it?"

"Laid."

Eddie snorted a laugh of disbelief.

"Christ, kid, that's what I was tryna tellya! You're 18 and you're a pretty girl, even all tattooed to hell and back. And you're a mask. You could get laid a lot easier than that. Me, I never had any trouble getting a woman, not from the first year my dick got hard. I could be with any broad I wanted. But I'm sittin' here with you, an' I'm gonna be sittin' here with you, next week. That oughta tellya something."

"Sure it does. It tells me that you're the only crazy motherfucker in this town who's man enough not to run from me, screaming."

Eddie laughed.

"Shit, Liv, I'm not afraid of you. I knowed you alla your life, an' your Ma and Pop before that."

"Exactly. And I'm not afraid of you, either, am I?"

Eddie thought about that for a few minutes.

"You're a smart cookie, ya know that, kid?"

"That's what my IQ Test says."

"Uh-huh. Don't blow your own horn. You'll start soundin' like that conceited prick Veidt. Speakin' of Ozzy, an' all the fuckin' pricks in this town like him, don't go braggin' all around town about how youse finally got me to come across. People in this business already think you and me are shit."

"Hey, last thing I wanna do is advertise I got a good thing goin' on. That's never been any good."

Smart kid.

Good kid.

"One more thing. Next time somebody calls you a drunk, or a thug, or a whore, or anything like that, I wantcha to take a good look at him. You tell me where the sunnuvabitch was and what he looks like, an' I don't give a fuck who he is or who he knows. I'll beat the shit out of him."

"Why would you wanna do that?"

At first, Eddie thought she was being a wiseass, and he was about to yell at her for it, but then he looked at her and realised the kid actually had no fucking idea.

"Kid, don'tcha know anything about the way shit works between guys and dolls? No, I guess ya don't. Okay. If you an' me are gonna be spendin' Thursdays together, that means somethin'. Yunno?"

Liv shook her head.

"Look, kid, if somebody calls you a whore, they're not just insultin' you. They're insultin' me. Understand?"

Liv just rolled her eyes.

Eddie swore and slammed his fist on the table.

"Goddamn it, kid, you just ain't no whore! It makes me fuckin' furious tae en think of somebody callin' youse a whore, treatin' youse like one, makin' youse think that's what you are! Hell, if youse could point me in the direction of the first asshole who told you that's what you was, I'd kill him."

Eddie meant every word.

"That would be Popeye MacTavish. You know him?"

"Yeah. Sure I know the crooked sunnuvabitch. Him and his clip joint hock shop, in the old neighbourhood, right there at Fulton and Rockaway. What the fuck does he have to do with it?"

She laughed a little, and told him a sleazy, disgusting, terrible story in a real light and goofy way, like it was really funny shit.

Except, it wasn't.

"You ain't laughing, Eddie."

"Did anybody else laugh after you told 'em that story."

"No. You got that same look of disgust on your face everybody I told it to does."

"There's a reason for that, kid. And it ain't you I'm disgusted with. Canya at least see that what that MacTavish asshole done to you was a lousy thing to do?"

"Aww, shit, Eddie, it's nothin'. I didn't care then, an' I don't know."

Eddie shook his head.

"Kid, you're ridin' for a big fall. I was younger'n you when I took mine, but by the time I was 18, I figured some of this shit out."

"What shit, Eddie?"

"Never mind, kid. Rome wasm't built in a day. C'mon, let's get some shut eye. You got work at nine."

Liv fell right to sleep, but Eddie had a harder time catching the sandman at work.

He looked over at her, sound asleep, her face completely untroubled, because she knew that, at least for the next few hours, he had her back.

Popeye MacTavish was good as dead.

And he was gonna go hard.

Real hard.

After he decided that, Eddie slept like a log.

* * *

**New York City, 1951, Napier Chemical Company**

**II: Merrie**

Just like Magdelene Malloy Damiano operated out of their apartment in East New York, Merrie Damiano Napier kept up the "family business" from a room in the burnt-out remains of Napier Chemical, which she lived, underneath, in a bunker, with her husband, Dr. John O'Rourke "Crazy Jack" Napier, the Joker, and their daughter, Trivelino.

One of her staunchest clients was Eddie Blake.

He hated doctors, and he didn't trust them, with good reason, in his case, and he wasn't about to talk to a priest about his problems, so you could count on Eddie showing up at least once a week.

Merrie had grown up watching her mother work, whether it was cards, colds, or broken bones, and so she let her daughter Liv watch her work.

Jack wasn't too fond of the idea; he wanted his daughter to grow up to be the 4th Dr. Napier, but Merrie was sure that what she was teaching Liv wouldn't get in the way.

That is, if she wanted what either of them expected, when she was older.

Liv was pretty cagey with strangers, regarding them with what most people considered to be the unnatural bright green gaze she inherited from her father.

But she was friendly to people she knew, and Eddie came around once a week; he was her little playmate Paulie's uncle, and, at least Merrie thought, her little playmate Laurie's father.

Like Liv, Laurie had her father's eyes.

When Eddie came in, Liv climbed up to sit at the table with them.

"Hiya, Mr. Blake."

"Hiya kid."

He set his arm on the table, rolled up his sleeve, and Merrie took off the bandage.

"Good. It's healing."

"Who shot you?" Liv asked.

"A badguy."

"Like my Daddy?"

"No, kid. A two-bit badguy."

"Liv, why don't you go down and see Daddy? I have to talk about grown-up things with Mr. Blake."

Liv looked at both of them.

"Okay." She said

"Okay, Eddie, why the hell have you been following me around?"

"Jesus, Merrie, those Church of Humanity fuckers, they're on a rampage. You know , just this weekend they burned a whole family at the stake, out in the Fountain Avenue dump? A guy, his mother, his wife, and two kids. The guy and one of his kids were mutants. They burnt the rest for the hell of it. Ya know they tried ta shoot the fuckin' mayor, because he's Catholic?"

"Eddie, I'm not a mutant. Liv's not a mutant. And Jack, he had an accident."

"They ain't gonna split hairs that way. Jack's the most famous mutant in New York. You know some of these nuts, they say he's the son of a devil. And you're a witch. That puts you and the kid in harm's way. And ya won't let Jack's bodyguards follow youse."

"You're goddamn right I won't! I love Jack, but he's always jumping at shadows. If I have to spend my whole life, and Liv has to spend hers hiding in a hole, what kid of life is that? I'm from east New York. I can take care of myself. Alright, Eddie. You're all done."

"At least lemme go with youse to the park. When Paulie an'…Laurie are there."

"Jesus, Eddie, you can say "my kid" to me. I didn't have to be psychic to know that's your kid."

"Yeah, she's real cute. Chip off the old block."

"God help us all."

**II: Jack**

The thing that most people didn't realise about Jack Napier was that his accident with the vat of chemicals hadn't affected his mind, only his body.

He was born The Joker; he didn't have to be made that way.

Jack had never been sane and he had always been violent, but he had a soft spot for his gentle, pretty, generous wife, who devoted most of her time to using her gifts and knowledge to help the people around her; the very people who shunned her for all her life because she was a witch and a half-breed.

A soft spot which extended to his beautiful little daughter; she had his smile, and his green eyes and red hair, but other than that, she was the image of her mother.

The Joker was secure in his world.

He lived in a bunker beneath the ruins of his father's dreams at the docks that was just about as secure as the one Hitler had lived in.

Jack had plans for those ruins, when his daughter grew up to be the 4th in a line of Dr. Napiers, his little girl who, because of her mother would have a good, sane, decent life, she would breathe life into those old dreams, again.

As for Jack, he was a man who had a place for everything in his world, and everything in it's place.

And he knew what was going on in his city, with these Church of Humanity crazies.

They were religiously based almost neo-Nazi hate group calling itself the Holy Church of Humanity, and he almost envied the scope of their reign of terror in New York.

It was targeting his kind, though, and Jack wasn't too fond of that.

It began with people in strange faux medieval robes vandalising stores belonging to Jewish businessmen and black churches, beating up homeless junkies and accosting suspected mutants in the streets.

Their activities escalated to terrible acts of violence. Whole families were slain in their homes because one or two of them were mutants. Businesses, homes and churches patronised by Jews, blacks, mutants, and suspected leftists were burned to the ground.

And for those people the Church of Humanity decided were the most evil, they reserved a special fate.

Several arsons in abandoned buildings on the docklands and in various dumps around the city revealed charred human corpses.

They were burning people at the stake.

Jack thought that his wife, who was a witch and married to a freak of nature, and his daughter, worse, the child of a witch and a freak of nature, would be natural and quite high-profile targets for the killer cult.

They were a bunch of superstitious, uneducated fanatical boobs; they weren't going to choose their victims based on a scientific analysis of their genetic molecular structure.

To these morons, a mutie was a mutie was a mutie.

He never wanted Merrie to leave the bunker without him or at least three bodyguards; but Merrie wasn't the kind of woman who could be dictated to, and she often slipped away to take Trivelino to a park in Bensonhurst where her old school friends Aggie and Edie Blake took their children to play.

She called him from a pay phone to tell him she'd shook the guards again and that she'd be home with Liv by five.

At five-fifteen, the Joker went up into the street, and saw the flames rising from a deserted warehouse.

He wasted no time loading himself and his chopper into the fastest car he owned and practically flew down the two blocks or so to the scene of the fire.

Jack Napier had seen many horrors in his life.

Some of them had been visited on him, some of them he visited on others, and some had nothing to do with him, at all.

But the worst horror of them all was bursting into the abandoned warehouse and seeing the stake in the middle of it, piled high with wood, and tongues of red and orange fire licking at a charred and blackened corpse bound to it; little more now that charred bones.

Charred bones and a blackened skull, jaws agape in a silenced scream.

Jack didn't believe in most of the things his wife did.

Dr. Napier was a scientist and a materialist, but, had the accident left him with functioning tear ducts, he would have been crying.

Because he knew it was her.

Life was a cruel thing, to a man who was hardly capable of love.

It took his beloved father, in a horrible act of violence, and now his beloved wife.

What about his little girl?

There were five people in strange robes gathered around it, four chanting some weird verse in pidgin Latin that assaulted the Joker's learned ears.

The fifth was attempting to throw a screaming, kicking, punching, biting, thrashing, scratching child into the flames.

Poor gentle Merrie hadn't enough fight in her, but Livvie was his little red devil, and she wasn't going down easily.

She saw him.

"Daddy! Daddy help me!" his little girl shrieked in terror.

The Joker suddenly remembered he had a machine gun in his hands.

Time to go to work.

He disabled the four with bursts of machine gun fire to their knees.

The fifth, terrified, simply dropped Livvie and began begging for his life.

She ran to her father and hid behind his long legs.

The Joker shot his legs out from under him, as well.

He picked Trivelino up.

"Close your eyes, Livvie. Don't turn around. Don't look." He told her.

"Daddy, Daddy, they burned Ma! They burned her all up, and she's dead!"

Jack remembered when he was 10, and his father came to the orphanage to get him.

He told Daddy all about what they did to him in that place, and Daddy burned it to the ground, with everybody still inside.

That was the first time Jack ever felt love, real love.

"I know, Livvie. So, you know what Daddy's going to do to them?"

"Burn them all up?"

"That's right. But it's not safe for you here, more of these bad people might come. I'm going to take you to stay with Edie. You'll get to see Paulie. Don't tell what happened, though. And Daddy will be back for you, as soon as he's done with these bad people. Okay?"

Liv nodded, tears falling down her tiny, sooty little face.

On his way back to the warehouse, diabolical tortures filled his mind, but what could be a more diabolical torture and a more fitting end to these fools than to be hoist by their own petard?

Livvie had a good idea.

He put out the flames with the buckets of water the disabled cult members set aside for the task, and took Trivelino to Bensonhurst, promising the wounded fiends that he would return.

When he returned, he carefully removed what was left of his Merrie from the metal pole she was tied to, and wrapped her in a blanket.

The four who had been chanting, he tied to the pole and burned alive.

They made a lovely fire.

The fifth, the executioner, he only burned partly, removing all of his extremities with a flaming torch.

After that, the Joker sent for his personal doctor, to save the man's life.

He would suffer a special kind of Hell in the room the Joker kept in his bunker for just such an occasion.

It would take the man several days to die.

For the first time since he was a child, Jack was at a loss, as he drove around in his car with Liv crying softly, and Merrie's remains in the trunk.

Then, he knew just what he would do.

Where he would go for justice.

"What the hell are you doing here! And what is that in your arms, you lunatic!"

Had Bats breached the security of his bunker, Joker would have acted the same way.

"I didn't come here for a fight, Bats. No tricks. I came here because I have no one else to go to for justice. I know you and the Comedian are working together on the Church of Humanity. I want to ask you to work a little harder."

"Go ahead, Bat. I know Jack. He's playing it straight. What the fuck's going on, here?"

The Comedian came out of the shadows of the Batcave.

The Joker brushed past his surprised enemy, and put the body on a table.

"Look what they did to my wife."

Batman unfolded the blanket.

"Oh Jesus, God!" he heard himself say.

"Oh no! Merrie! Oh no, Jesus, Jesus, God in Heaven, oh no!" the Comedian cried.

Nothing but blackened bones, with some charred sinew sticking to them, the remains still warm and smoking.

The mouth of the charred skull open in a silent scream.

"Jack, where's the kid? Did they get the kid?" Eddie asked.

He had tears in his eyes.

That was alright, Jack wished he could have.

"No. I got there in time to save her. She gave them a good fight. But she saw the whole thing. And when I got there, they were trying to throw her into the fire."

"Where is your child, Joker?" Batman asked.

He covered Mrs. Napier's remains.

"She's in the car. I don't know what I'm going to do with her. She's only half as crazy as I am; I'm hoping that will save her. I want them all dead. Every woman-burning, baby-slaughtering madman among them. But even with my criminal resources, I can't find out who every New York member of the Church of Humanity was, where they live, under what guise as an ordinary citizen they operated. Of course, I do have connections you don't. If you work with me, I'll work with you. We have to put our petty differences aside and get rid of these lunatics before they burn the whole city and everybody in it to the ground!"

"I won't work with you." Batman declared.

"I knew you'd say that. Mr. Wayne, this is my wife and my child!"

The Bat looked somewhat taken aback.

"Dr. Napier, I am doing my best." He finally replied.

"Are you nuts, Wayne? This ain't no time to fuckin' quibble! We need to get these people the fuck off the streets. You know how many mutants there are in this city, quietly passin' for normal, tryna live their lives like anybody else? I do. My father was a mutie. I got a sister who's a mutie. They both can pass. But maybe these Co of H cocksuckers know that. Maybe they got a list and they're checkin' it twice, gonna find out who's a mutie and burn 'em real nice? Maybe they're gonna burn my family, next. Or maybe they'll decide they don't like guys who dress up as bats? Or anybody else in a mask. What about that shit, huh? I'll work with you, Jack, if it means getting these fuckers."

Batman said nothing.

He was suddenly looking over Jack's shoulder, with a look of horror on his face.

Jack turned around.

Liv was there; she had followed him, tiny and frightened and covered in soot.

"Come here, Livvie. It's alright." Jack told her.

She walked out of the shadows, into the light, and Jack picked her up.

She clung to him, and looked Batman right in the face.

He knew that look.

He had worn it himself, many years ago, in a dark and bloody alley.

But she was so tiny, only two years old.

"Dr. Napier?"

"Yes, Mr. Wayne?"

"I'll do it." Batman said.

"Good. I'm going to take my baby home. And my wife. I'll be in touch with both of you. But I have a funeral to plan, and I think Livvie needs to see a doctor."

Life is cruel, but sometimes, fate is kind.

Trivelino was in the hospital for about a week; she had a few minor burns, and she was suffering from smoke inhalation which led to a relatively minor lung infection.

She was a hardy little thing, though, and got better, quickly.

By the time she got home, she didn't seem to remember what happened.

Jack considered that a blessing for the child.

She remembered that Ma had died, and she remrmbered seeing her mother perish, but she didn't recall how.

She accepted the memory of a slip and fall outside on some wet stairs that her father put in her mind.

But, after that, Trivelino was a different child.

It wasn't just the nightmares she had.

No, something had changed in her.

Turned.

As young as she was, she had begun to look quite like him when she smiled.

* * *

**East New York, Brooklyn, 1968**

**III: Popeye**

There were worse men in New York City than Oliver "Popeye" MacTavish, and that was how he justified himself to himself, but it was a piss poor justification for a man to whom the word "slimeball" could easily attach.

He was a short, squat man who had ginger hair everywhere except on his head, which was bald as an egg. He had a big barrel chest and huge bulgy tattooed arms that look liked they were carved out of a block of granite, presiding over short, bandy legs and a bit of a beer gut, with his bristly moustached face and his bald as an egg square head sitting on top, with no neck in sight.

Popeye, who had been no damn good as a young man, went to the Navy instead of to jail in his teens, and did twenty years before the mast, five in the brig.

When he returned to his old neighbourhood, he ran a pawn shop in East New York, on Fulton, where it was well known that he didn't ask questions about what you brought in and where it came from.

He was notoriously stingy, and made sure every time to stick it to his clients, giving them as little money as he could for their goods and selling them at a high price.

If you pawned a big ticket item, your pawn ticket was good to wipe your ass on. If Popeye could get a good price, he'd sell it out from under you and tell you it was a dangerous neighbourhood and kids steal, even though on the one occasion some Puerto Rican kid tried to rob him he practically blew the kid in half with the sawed-off under the counter.

So what if he paid out shit money?

These people were desperate, they needed some cash, and the bank wasn't forthcoming.

And big fucking deal if the suckers came back with their ticket and found he already sold their shit?

Hell, most of the time these deadbeats put the money in their arm and the next time he saw them it was dead and stuffed in a trash can. Was it his fault if one or two of them turned out to be on the up and up?

Fuck'm.

If they were decent people, they wouldn't be coming to deal with the likes of him.

In addition, Popeye did a good side business selling beer to teenagers out of the back. They had to have a car, and show him a licence, then he could tell himself they were over 16 and if 18 was the drinking age, where was the harm?

Because teenagers younger than that never had fake ID's, or stole cars, or took joyrides in the family vehicle, or anything like that.

Popeye told himself a lot of stories like that, so he could live with himself.

Like the goddamn Navy, after fifteen years of service and not one promotion, he deserved a little R & R and it wasn't like the goddamn G couldn't come up with some extra money for payroll.

So what if he did more fighting and malingering than he did his duty, what they paid you in the Navy, it wasn't worth more than a half-assed job.

In 1962, he got a new regular customer for his beer business, a pretty little tomboy of an Irish girl with the beginnings of a serious network of tattoos, including "Hell" on her left knuckles and "Fire" on her right, long red hair just a shade darker orange than his, who drove up in a '33 Ford V-8 in various stages of repair, depending on the amount of grease on her hands and motor oil on her dungarees.

Every Friday she bought a case of Newcastle Brown Ale from him.

She had a mad, merry littler twinkle in her green eyes, like a wicked little pixie, and she was built like a brick shithouse, to boot.

Too cute to be a minute over sixteen, smart little thing.

Smoked like a chimney, swore like a pirate, fought in the street with the best of them, or so she said and the odd black eye and the bloodstains on her clothes that complemented the motor oil testified to it.

One Friday night she drove up, looking like the cat who swallowed the canary, and told him she was all out of money.

"What else have you got to offer me, Pixie?" he asked her.

"Well, Popeye, I'd do somethin' for you, but you can see I got this fat lip, an' my mouth fuckin' hurts like a bastard. Maybe you can think of somethin'. Find out if I'm a real redhead."

It wouldn't be the first time that Popeye traded goods for services with a thirsty young lady, but for what reason he couldn't fathom, this crazy little thing actually seemed to like him.

He brought her the beer, and she gave him double the money.

"That's for services rendered, my good man."

"You little minx!" he laughed.

"There's a tip for ya in there, Popeye. Seeya next week. Then it'll be your turn." She said.

The following week she brought money, but told him she felt she had to return the favor.

The week after that, she brought cash for beer and demanded Scotch.

"Shit, Popeye, I guess you an' me will just have to get in the back of the car. But ya gotta wear a rubber for me. I brought 'em. Agreed?"

Agreed?

He got quite a good thing going with his little pixie.

She came around every Friday to buy her beer, but she wasn't just looking for a drink, she was looking for a good time, and Popeye never failed to give her one.

Oh, he sometimes thought she wasn't quite 16, maybe she was 15 and bluffing. And he sometimes thought of where she lived and who her parents were, and what it was she as doing the rest of the weekend with all that beer, because, unlike his other teenage customers, she always came alone and was there every week, at the same time, like clockwork.

Sometimes he even wondered if he shouldn't offer her a job at the shop, or offer to take her someplace on Friday nights, or on Saturday.

Invite her up to his apartment over the shop, get her story.

Take her to the bedroom, make nice with her.

But, she never made any noise about the nature of their association, and whoever her father was, it wasn't Popeye, and if he couldn't keep his girl in line, was if Popeye's job?

Fuck no, of course it wasn't.

And did he really want to get involved with a tattooed, street-fighting grease monkey the likes of her?

Well, no more than he was, that was for sure.

Then something terrible happened.

He went to Trivelino Mac's, in Bensonhurst, and happened to see her behind the counter, talking to Mac.

Popeye began to sweat it.

Mac had five, three boys and two girls, was she one of his kids?

That wouldn't go over well.

Popeye got into the corner so she wouldn't see him, and waited for her to leave, bouncing and strutting happily out the door in her rolling tough-guy gait, jingling her keys in her pockets.

When he asked, casually, Mac told him she was his niece.

Well, practically.

She'd lived with the McClatcheys from the time she was 7 till she was 11, and even if there was no blood between them at first, after she saved his life two years ago, that was blood enough for him.

"Can you imagine, Popeye, a girl 11 years old? She shot the man who tried to kill me, and with the bullet that went through me still in her, she drove to the hospital. Sat in my lap and pushed my feet with hers to work the pedals. You know she'll be done with school, up at FDR high next school year? They already want her at NYU. She'll be startin' college at 15. And there isn't a man in this borough who could lick her in a fair fight. She's workin' on a black belt in just about alla those Oriental arts, but if you ask me, she's already got one in Brooklyn Irish tough."

Popeye did the math, and realised, much to even his horror that he, a grown man forty-three years old, had been putting it to a kid only 13.

Worse, Mac's niece was Liv Napier.

The Joker's daughter, and Bruce Wayne's stepdaughter.

Popeye died a thousand deaths in his mind.

He was quite distraught.

"What's the matter, Popeye? Ya look like somebody just walked over your grave."

"I feel like it, Mac. I need another drink."

After he had his drink, Popeye went back home, to his apartment over the pawn shop.

It wasn't his fault.

Not at all.

She drove her own car, which meant she had to be at least 16, and she didn't come on like a little girl, and when he'd first done the dirty deed to her, in the back of her 1933 Ford V-8 that she'd bragged she built up from junk, there was no bleeding and no screaming.

How was he to know she was just a kid?

How did he know the girl was only 13?

She drove a car, she had a license, not a permit, and there was a grease stain over the year, but Liv was a real grease monkey, what was he supposed to do?

She never said she was 13, she had tits out to here, for Christ's sake, she was built like a woman, and kept a knife in her pocket and wore a gun strapped to her ankle and swore like a sailor, and she said she went to FDR High and was graduating in a year or so, and she didn't talk 17, let alone less.

That didn't add up to 13, what should he do?

Well, he could contact her stepfather, and explain himself, and the girl's doings, even anonymously.

And he could sit her down and explain to her that she was setting her shoes on the wrong path, and to let what she'd started with him end with him.

But was it his business?

And wasn't he the one who was tricked and lied to?

Yes, you've done it now, Popeye.

You've followed your pecker and it's led you up the path.

If the Joker finds out you've been selling his genius golden girl booze and slipping it to her, well, they'll find you floating in the East River with your dick and your balls stuffed in your mouth.

And, if Bruce Wayne finds out, my God, he'll have you in front of every court in New York.

No question you'll go straight to jail, and what will they think of you in there, sent up for fooling around with a girl her age, and pumping her full of booze?

Did he need a lawyer, Popeye wondered?

He would never touch her again, his right hand to God.

No, the kid, she wouldn't talk.

She came from the street, from Crazy Jack, and one thing she knew as well as her name was that you didn't rat.

I'll just get rid of her, I'll tell her just what I think of her, and that'll be an end to it.

The next time she came around, Popeye shooed her away, and none too nicely.

In fact, as nastily as he could.

"You're only 13, and you're Crazy Jack Napier's! You might have got me killed or tossed in jail."

"What are you squawkin' about, Popeye? I'll be 14 in April, and if you looked close enough you could still see my birthdate on my licence under the grease stains. Besides, my Ma met my Pop when she was 13 and they was married when she was 15, and nobody complained."

"That was years ago! Things was different, then! You've made a fool of me, comin' around here, an lyin' to me! Now go on, go! Buy your beer and peddle your jailbait ass elsewhere, you drunken little thug of a shanty Irish whore! That's all you are, and it's all you'll ever be, so go on, and get away from me!"

That got him a broken nose.

You wouldn't think a girl like her would have a left like that, but at least she left him alone.

The crazy kid could have gotten him thrown in jail, or worse.

As the years rolled on, and Liv Napier built up as much a reputation as a real Brooklyn Irish thug as she did a mental giant, and especially when news came to him that in addition to working for Dr. Manhattan in and after college, the girl became a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Popeye began to sweat it.

And rumours that she was the Harlequin made the situation worse.

What was keeping a violent woman with a violent temper, a woman who was a stone cold killer with connections to the G from coming back with an old score to settle on a drunken whim?

But, the Joker never arrived with his goon squad and a deathly smile.

Bruce Wayne never sent the cops banging on his door.

Their little girl never showed up with a bellyful of whiskey and an eyeful of rage. Popeye's worries slowly left him.

By 1968, he hardly thought of her at all.

Maybe she was growing out of some of that wildness and drunkenness, and there was no harm and no foul from Popeye MacTavish.

Now, instinctual fear of Eddie Blake, that was something any reasonable person had.

There was an air of menace clinging to the big Irishman in his fatigue pants and his white V-neck short-sleeved undershirt that his dog tags clanked against, something in the clomp of his boots and the way he chewed his cigar that sort of made a man's balls seize up a little.

His father had that same air of menace.

Eddie's father, Mick the Merciless, was without a doubt one of the most evil, bad, mean, no- good sons of bitches the Devil ever let out of hell in human form.

And everybody in Brroklyn had heard the rumour that Mick Thew erciless never made it to be killed resisting arrest; Eddie and his twin sister beat the man to death with their bare hands in the kitchen of the Blake family's East New York apartment when they were only 13 or 14.

If you had a brain, you were at least a little afraid of Eddie Blake.

He looked around for awhile.

"Hey, Popeye, how much you want for this ring?"

It was a recent addition, a silver Claddagh with a real emerald in the heart setting, carved into a heart shape.

Popeye had just given some weepy-looking junkie one fifty for it, but it was probably worth almost a grand.

"For you, Eddie? Five hundred."

"That much, huh?"

"That's real silver. And a real emerald."

"I guess it's worth it. It ain't just for some broad. It's for a real nice girl."

"You gotta girl, Eddie? You? Finally?"

"Kinda."

Eddie put the ring in his pocket.

Popeye didn't stop him.

Eddie was no criminal, Popeye knew he'd be paid.

He didn't realise how until Blake until he opened the door, turned the sign around so it said "Closed", locked it, and pulled down all the shades.

Panic crawled around in his guts, like a virus.

"Look, Eddie, I don't want trouble."

"Well you got trouble, Popeye!" Eddie snarled.

He had that look on his face, that look his father used to get on his face when he came to collect on his bets with Popeye's father.

"I swear, Eddie, on my soul, I didn't do it."

Popeye didn't even know what it was he didn't do, and he didn't care if he did do it, he was denying it.

Saving his ass, don't you know.

"Popeye, you sunnuvabitch, you're a piecea shit an' youse always has been! Your father was an' honest man, but he liked ta gamble, and ya woulda thought my piecea shit Pop rubbin' him out woulda made you go the right way, but not you! Ya slept through your Navy career, ya stole the payroll an' did five for it, and then when ya came back here ya opened this clip joint! Ya make Scrooge look like Mickey Mouse, Popeye. An' if that ain't enough, ya sell booze to kids so they can get tight and crash their cars into old ladies walkin' their dogs and get everybody killed. Ya did plenty. But I'm here about a girl I know. A girl I made a promise to. I think ya know her, too."

"I…I..I know a lotta girls, Eddie."

"Yeah. A lotta dolls run outa money for beer, ya lowlife prick! Maybe you remember her. She's a real pretty red-haired Irish girl. Not too tall. Built. Stacked. A smile that reminds you of a bad little pixie. Oh, she's got more tattoos than you do, and a few serious scars, but none on her face or anyplace else that matters to me, an' it don't take away from her. She wears 'em well. Looks good on her. She's a good kid, but she's had some bad years. Too much drinkin'. Men treatin' her wrong. Worked too hard tryin' to clean up the streets. When you knew her, though, she only had the one scar. And not so many tattoos. She was just a little girl. Only 13."

Somebody came in the back.

"I've got the front all locked up, Eddie. And let me get to the shotgun under the counter, here and…there we go! No more bullets! So this is him. The man who set my little girl's feet on the road to ruin."

You can't mistake a man in a purple suit with a white face and green hair.

Whistling merrily, he took off his jacket, and his shirt, and hung them on a hanger.

Even though his face was changed, you could still see Crazy Jack Napier in the Joker.

Somehow, that was even scarier.

"Yeah. This is him."

Popeye told his last story.

"Be reasonable, fellas! I didn't know she was 13. She had a car! And a licence. She didn't look 13. She didn't talk like she was 13! And I never forced her into anything! I treated her good! She liked me! I never hurt her!"

"Did you ever take a good look at that licence?"

Jack.

"What the fuck were you selling booze to a teenage girl for?"

Eddie.

"Did you ever ask her how old she was?"

"Did you care?"

"Ya treated her good, huh? Where?"

"In this filthy dump?"

"In the back of her car?"

"Treated her good, huh? Plied her with booze and fucked her! Real good, ya bastard!"

"Tossed her out when you found out she was 13. Called her a shanty Irish whore. And a thug. And a drunk. The daughter of an educated, wealthy man, from a fine Scots-Irish family, we Napiers."

"Made it like it was her fault. Made her think that's what she really was."

"No! No, no, no, it wasn't like that!" Popeye protested.

Eddie grabbed him.

"Oh yeah? What the hell was it like, then? What was it like when you had a kid 13 years old suckin' your dick for a bottle of watered-down Scotch? What was it like when you'd throw one into her and load the beer into the car and send her away and count the money? What was it like when you told her to get the fuck out and not come back, for bein' a liar an' a drunk, an' a little shanty Irish whore?" he demanded.

"You son of a bitch, she still calls herself that! My brilliant, beautiful, kind-hearted little girl, superhero to the poor, the wretched, the defenceless and the forgotten! It was you! You were the one who showed her the only thing she could expect from a man was a cheap screw and cheaper booze! You showed her that kindness was pulling out and tenderness was wearing a rubber! You took a sweet, pretty, impressionable kid who just wanted to have a few beers with her friends and mistook you for a decent guy, and you treated her like she was a dumb little whore and set her feet on the road to ruin!" The Joker seethed.

"For that, Popeye, you're gonna pay. You're gonna die like no man has died for at least five hundred fuckin' years." Eddie added.

The Joker took off his trousers, as well.

"Jack, dontcha have work clothes?"

"No. I don't own anything that I don't mind getting blood on. I always work in my BVD's."

"To each his own." Eddie shrugged.

Eddie opened the paper sack he was carrying, and put on a butcher's apron.

"Now that's a good idea. That's not Mick's apron, is it?"

"Well, Pop had one good idea in his life. No, it ain't. We buried him wrapped in his apron. He woulda wanted it that way, the sunnuvabitch. And you, Popeye, ya liked the old bastard so well, you'll be seein' him, soon. See, I sent the Old Man to Hell, an' when you'se gets there, don't forget to tell him Eddie sent ya. He's been stokin' the kettles under all the cocksuckers I send down there to keep him company, until the day I join him, and take over for myself."

The Joker laughed, merrily.

"I love that line, Eddie. I never get tired of hearing it. You know what that is? That's old-time class. Some of these kids, they have no tag line, no catchphrase, just a plastic cape and a ski mask and a pair of their sister's tights."

"Yeah. That or they go so many gadgets and gizmos an' all that shit, they never get far enough out in the street to do any good. It ain't what it used to be, Jack. See, that's' one of the things I respect about the kid. She does it the old-fashioned way."

"Well, that's how she was trained, after all. My, Popeye, what a lovely piece. I do believe this Claymore must be at least four hundred years old. Here, Eddie. Feel the weight of it."

"Feels like the real thing. Tell me Popeye, how much did ya give the poor fuckin' schmuck for his priceless family fuckin' heirloom?"

"Two hundred." Popeye confessed.

"Well, whoever he was, he's going to be gettin' his money's worth, now!" the Joker chuckled.

Eddie handed him the sword.

"You first, Jack. She's your daughter."

"Why thank you, Eddie. Tell me, Mr. MacTavish? Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

Eddie set his cigar down on the counter, and backed off a step or two.

And then, just then, at the end of all things, Popeye MacTavish couldn't tell himself a story, anymore.

He had thought Mickey Blake a better man than his own father, secretly, even after Mick the Merciless killed his father.

He slept and cheated and malingered his way through his years in the Navy, and did hard time for robbing men who worked harder than him for their pay.

He took advantage of poor people in a bad neighbourhood; he swindled them out of their treasures and sold them off for more than they were worth.

He sold booze to kids as long as they had a car and an ID, whether they were 13 or 17, it was all bad, and some of it ended badly and he never cared, and he supposed none of those girls wanted to suck his dick for whiskey, and the only one who had done it for free, the only girl who had ever really liked him, he robbed her from the cradle, and treated her with indifference, taught her when she was only 13 that she was a drunk and a whore and that she shouldn't expect more from any man than what she got from him.

In his last moments, Popeye repented unto himself, although, not to any god or gods, so it's unlikely he was saved.

And it was much more likely that he found himself boiling in a copper kettle, and there, suffused in red and orange flame, but still dressed to the nines in his gangster suit and Jimmy Cagney hat at a rakish angle was Mickey Blake.

Howling with laughter and perhaps agaony as Popeye howled in pain when he stoked the fires under the kettle.

But he was burning, burning hotter than any of the many souls in the many kettles he endlessly stoked.

"Mick, doesn't it bother you?"

"I'm the Devil's Own, Popeye. This is where I belong."

And he laughed again, that laugh that was somewhere between a laugh and a scream and stoked Popeye's kettle, as the flames that engulfed him burned all the hotter and brighter.

Or at least, that's the way it should have been.

Now, there were worse men in New York City than Oliver "Popeye" MacTavish, and that was how he justified himself to himself, but it was a piss poor justification for a man to whom the word "slimeball" could easily attach.

And when it came to pass that the police opened up his shop a few days later and found that some disturbed but witty soul with a taste for history had disembowelled, castrated, beheaded, and drawn and quartered Popeye with a pawned family heirloom Claymore, no one was sorry to see him go.

Even if they didn't say so, no one thought that Popeye hadn't got the kind of death he richly deserved.

Indeed, there was such a wealth of suspects and a lack of evidence of who had done the dirty deed that it passed from the police blotter quickly.

Soon, another man, a nice Jewish fellow and his wife, from the neighbourhood, re-opened the shop and started doing an honest business.

"What? It's a shame what they did to Popeye! Feh! It's a shame nobody did it sooner, that's the shame! If the police let me, I would have kept the head, and hung it outside from the fence! It was justice from God, it was God's sword in the hands of the man who did it."

As for Eddie Blake, he went home and cleaned himself up, and drove to see the girl he'd made his promise to, at her stepfather's mansion on Long Island, and he gave her the ring.

"Jesus, Eddie, it's a real one! Like Ma used to have!"

"Yeah, kid. I know."

"What did I do?"

"Nothin'. I bought youse a present. Din'cha ever get a present from a guy before?"

"Nope."

"Well, now ya have."

The next day, she heard what happened to Popeye MacTavish.

"Poor old Popeye. He was a lousy son of a bitch, and he didn't do me any favours. But, poor old Popeye just the same."

Liv put the ring on her finger, looked at her hand, clenched and unclenched her other fist, chewed her lip and pushed back her hair.

Then, she looked over at Eddie, again.

"Jesus, Eddie, how bad and wrong would it be if I thanked you?"

Eddie put his arm around her.

"Me and your father. And it's not bad at all, kiddo. Not bad at all."

* * *

**Wayne Manor, Long Island, about a week later **

**IV: Liv**

Nightmares, they come with the territory.

I mean, when your average day's work includes mild violence, and a hard day at the office encompasses firefights, hand-to-hand combat, bullet wounds, knife scars and some nasty kills, unless you are a total psychopath, and I'm only a partial one, I think, that shit is going to come back on you.

Me, I started having nightmares, bad ones, long before I put a mask on.

They started after I saw my Ma die when I was just two.

According to the Old Man, Ma slipped on some wet steps taking me down to the subway to go to the park in Bensonhurst, and died in the fall.

I wouldn't know.

I can't remember how she died, only that she died right in front of me.

The older I get, though, the more I think that there's something he's not telling me, but you know something?

I don't want to know.

Anyway, I've always had nightmares, and I guess I talk in my sleep.

That's what Dick always told me.

Me and my brother, we slept in the same room from when I was 11 until when I was 16, and even now, we still live in the same part of Wayne Manor; his bedroom's right across from mine, poor soul.

I guess Dick's used to my nightmares, and before I started that Thursday thing with Eddie, he was always the only one close enough to me when I was sleeping to know about them.

That's another reason I never laid down and slept with a man.

But Eddie's different; I trust Eddie.

Anyway, I was having some fucking nightmare and I don't know what I was doing, but I woke up standing by the window in Eddie's living room, screaming, with him trying to shake me awake.

While I was out, I blabbed something about how I got my latest scar, so I had to come clean.

The good thing about it, though, he didn't look real shocked about my nightmare.

We sat down at the table in the kitchen, and he gave me a cup of hot tea with a little whiskey in it, and he got me calmed down.

The next day, I was at home, getting ready to go to work with Jon, and I got a call.

Well, Alfred got the call.

Agent Napier was to report to the New York S.H.I.E.L.D office of the Director of Covert Operations.

In uniform.

Yesterday.

So, here I am, it's eight in the morning, and I'm ready for the lab, where all I do is put a white coat on over one off my usual high fashion outfits, when I find out I have to be shipshape for S.H.I.E.L.D, pronto.

Which meant I had to put on my S.H.I.E.L.D uniform, which I hate, because it's almost as dignified as what the female officers wear on _Star Trek_.

I asked Nick Fury if I could just wear the women's tunic and some men's issue pants, and he just about shit, so if I can't wear my S.H.I.E.L.D fatigues, which you can't, when you're at the main office, I have to put on this goddamn black skirt with the two pleats on the sides, and the usual tunic.

Now, I haven't even seen my uniform in at least six months, so I am about to have a giant fit, but Alfred, God save Alfred before any kings or queens, not only does he have my uniform, he has it pressed, and he has cleaned up and shined my jump boots so they actually look presentable.

It says in the manual that boots may be worn with the uniform, and it doesn't say what kind.

So there.

Also, as I can't wear my usual tank top and boxers with this ensemble, he had thoughtfully and discreetly tucked in a blue cotton bra and panties in with the tunic.

"Where did these come from, Alfred?"

"A Christmas gift from your father, Miss Napier. Like most of us, he holds out the hope that you will someday decide to stop dressing in drag."

So, I got dressed.

The old shoulder holster and the bra didn't work out too well, so, I just went with the snub-nose in my one boot and the Buck knife in the other, as usual.

When I came out, Dick had a few snarky comments to make.

He actually took my fucking picture, to commemorate that I was wearing a dress.

Skirt.

Dress, skirt, whatever the fuck.

"Do I look OK?" I asked Alfred.

I just let my hair hang loose; I never know what to do with it and it's not usually a big problem.

Loose and everywhere or in two ponytails.

"May I suggest a French braid?" he replied.

I don't even know what the fuck that is, but it's a good thing Alfred knew how to do one.

As he braided my hair, he reminded me to sit with my knees together and if I dropped something not to bend over and pick it up, but to crouch down.

So, I drove to Brooklyn, and parked my car in front of Eddie and Edie's place, in Eddie's spot, because good luck finding a parking place anywhere near Fifth Avenue in the middle of the day.

Edie was home, between cleaning jobs, and she told me about how I looked very professional, and it was nice to see me wearing women's clothes, for once.

You know something?

I had no idea everybody was so hung up on my dress code.

Anyway, once I got to HQ, I had to practically give a blood sample and piss in a jar just to get to the floor where Eddie's office is, and when I got there, I had to fucking sit around for a half hour, bored out of my tree, staring at this non-com broad who was the front office secretary.

She clearly thought her outfit was accessorised better than mine, and she was real shitty with me, and made a little "humph" sound when I poured a little whiskey from the flask in my shoulder bag into the really bad coffee she had grudgingly brought me.

I mean, the guy who founded AA would have put whiskey in that shit, just to kill the taster.

So here I am, uncomfortable as hell, pissed off from having to fight my way through morning traffic, and wondering what the hell it was Eddie was going to break my balls over.

Finally, Miss Playtex Tits tells me that Director Blake will see me now.

I get up and walk past her, and she looks me up and down.

"I see you're a field agent. You should have left those boots in the field."

"Tell me, honey, do you call him Director Blake when he's got you bent over the desk? Guess how long that's gonna last? You better learn to type." I reply.

And into the office I go.

Eddie is sitting behind his desk.

He's wearing his black S.H.I.E.L.D fatigues, but, then again, him and Director Fury are in charge of this rodeo, they can do what they want.

"Are you bangin' that broad out there? Better wear a double rubber, man. She prob'ly spreads 'em for everybody. Cheerleader type." I say.

I don't even get a laugh out of Eddie before he tells me to sit down.

He's giving me a funny look.

"What?"

"Nothin'. Youse looks a lot different when you ain't dressed like a grease monkey."

Then he gets right to business.

"Okay, kid. Lemme tell you what I already know. I know that it was members of the New York chapter of the C of H that grabbed you. I know you wasted three of them. I know you ain't told anybody because you want to settle this yourself. Now, you tell me what else you know."

Eddie's not all muscle and bullets, he's a regular Sherlock Holmes.

I mean, even Pop says he's a good detective, and not only that, he's got eyes and ears everywhere.

Especially his own.

"Can we talk, here?"

"Walls are soundproof. I check for bugs every time I walk into the room."

Wait.

I better explain to all of you what the Church of Humanity would want with Little Ol' Me.

Trivelino, you're not a mutant.

You don't have the X-Factor.

What _does_ the Church of Humanity want with you?

Yes, you're right, I don't have the X-Factor. But, my mother was a witch, or, if you don't like that term, a practitioner of herbal and folk medicine who had greater than normal psi abilities.

And my father, well he's a genuine freak of nature, I mean, the man fell (or was pushed, depends on the source) into a vat of shit-hot chemical waste, and it didn't kill him.

Or wreck his mind.

Hell, it was a few years after that that he and Ma made me, so it didn't even slow down his reproductive capabilities.

That is pretty freaky.

So, these assholes at the C of H not being, unlike myself, experts in genetics and evolutionary biology, they aren't going to split hairs about there being miles and years between Magneto and Storm and Nightcrawler with the X-Factor and little old me with an eccentric genetic cocktail from Ma and Pa.

To them, a freak is a freak is a freak.

What happened was, I got grabbed right off the street.

Low tech shit.

Car pulls up, door opens, I get coshed on the head, I'm out, they pull me into the car.

When I wake up, I'm hanging by my wrists from a beam.

And its question time.

Do I know my mother was a mutant freak, and so is my evil father?

I explained otherwise, or started to, but that's when they put the current through me.

I don't know what I was expected to say; they asked me a lot of questions about fire and stakes and crazy shit like that, and I got shocked and burned from where they attached the electrodes and beat with a rubber hose, and so on.

The thing is, I got loose pretty easy, and had I been in better shape I would have been able to kill a lot more than three of them, but they had me at a disadvantage, and I never made it to the door.

I don't even remember them cutting my throat or throwing me out of the car; I didn't come to until I was lying in the street and bleeding to death and trying to crawl to something like safety.

The next thing I saw after the three or four of them I hadn't killed got the best of me was Dr. Levitt, bending over me, and when I tried to talk all I could do was gurgle.

"Don't move. You're alright now, the ambulance is coming. The cut isn't deep, you're going to live. You'll need a lot of blood, but you're going to live. Don't listen to those _meshugga_ at Brooklyn General, listen to me. I see more of it than they do. You're going to live."

So, I told Eddie what I knew.

"I know plenty. For one thing, they're still not organised, here. I think they still have the Massacre of '54 fresh in their minds. Besides, we know it's dangerous with all the masks around for the C of H to have a regular base in New York. So, what they do here is true terrorist shit. Swoop in, attack, split, scatter, and regroup elsewhere."

"And?"

"And I got some intel on where some of them might be regrouping."

"You got a plan?"

"Sure. I get my hands on one, I tell him I'll let him live if he tells me where the others are. He tells me. I kill him, and he gets cleaned up. Then I move onto the next one. All the time, I keep talking to my sources. Investigating. Eventually, I find the nest. Then I do to it what you do to bugs. And these ones, nobody cleans them. They get left out, as a warning to the rest of them. Scum like you ain't welcome in New York."

He leaned over the desk.

"Kid, why didn't you let me in on this before?"

Not why didn't I tell pretty much every mask in town in the course of an investigation that lasted a month, not why didn't I tell my own stepfather.

Why didn't I let him in on this before.

Him.

"It's personal. I got a grudge against those people. They got it in for me, and my family. It's my business. Nobody else's."

Eddie put his head in his hand, and ran his hand through his hair.

"Personal how, kid?"

"I dunno, Eddie. But I know there's a reason my father made me go to school under the name Olive Malloy when I was a kid. And there's a reason I could only visit my grandparents in secret. There's a reason Bruce Wayne decided to adopt Jack Napier's child. There's a reason that when I dream about my mother dying, I dream of fire, not falling. There's a reason and I think it has to do with the C of H. I know it's gotta be personal for you, too, Eddie. Because there's a reason you and Bruce ever worked together, and the only thing you ever worked together on was rooting out the C of H. And whatever you did, you did such a good job of it they don't dare get a foothold in this city ever again. And I know my Ma, she was like your doctor."

"Kid, your Ma was more than my doctor. An' I don't mean that in any dirty kinda way. And yeah, what I got against the C of H, it's real personal. It's no secret Paulie's sister's a mutant; she goes to the X-Institute. But she's not the only one. It's blood between us, kid. You better keep my secret."

"Eddie, whatever it is, I'll take it to my grave. You want I should swear in blood?"

"No! You an' alla that swearin' in blood, ya seen too many movies! The old man, my Pop, he was a mutant. That's why he was so hard to kill. Not in any obvious way, though, he always passed for normal. One of my sisters is a mutant. She's passin' too. But you know the C of H. They don't split hairs. When they were killin' mutants an' their whole families, mutants an otherwise, I got antsy. There was always word on the street that Mick the Merciless might have been a mutie. That would have been enough that my family was next. You're goddamn right it's personal to me."

So I asked him.

"Eddie, what do you know about Ma's death?"

"More than you wanna ever know, kid. That's personal to me, too. But there's another thing. You can't just go off half-cocked, pullin' alla these cowboy stunts. You work for the G. Take advantage of it."

"But I don't work in Covert."

"You do now."

"Jeez, Eddie, you mean I'm under you, now? That's a coveted position."

Eddie wanted to laugh at my double entendre, but he was trying to be serious.

"What you got here is a mission, Agent Napier. In this file, that's what I know about the 12 surviving members of the 15 member C of H cell that's been operating in the New York Metro area. I don't like there bein' a C of H cell in my town. I want it busted up. And I want it done as nasty and public as you can. If you need to stash a couple bodies to make the rest think you're trading life for information, go ahead. But I want the public, and their C of H cronies to see some of these bastards dead, the hard way, on the cover of the New York Post. That's half. I want the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D's behind it, quiet. And there's one more thing, Agent Napier."

"What's that, Mr. Director?"

"This is my investigation, too. We share information. And when it's time to go in, you don't go in alone. You get me?"

My jaw almost hit the floor.

"You want to work with me? You want me to work with you?"

"You object?"

"Are you gonna be orderin' me around?"

Eddie just laughed.

"You wanna be in charge?" he asked.

"No. I understand the chain of command. But I don't work well with others."

"Neither do I, kid. We'll just hafta learn not ta step on each other's toes."

I could live with that.

After all, it's not every day a bush league punk like me gets to go to bat with a heavy hitter like Eddie.

That would do wonders for my standing, both with the G and in the mask community.

I figured I was dismissed, but when I went for the door, it was still electronically locked.

I turned around to ask Eddie what gives and he was right behind me.

And I mean right behind me, like you couldn't have fit a fucking bullet between us.

"What gives, Mr. Director?"

"You're wearin' a skirt, doll. I ain't never seen youse in a skirt, before. Or wearin' panties like a real girl. You wearin' a bra, too?"

Now let me tell you, this is some hot shit.

I mean, Eddie's practically panting when he's talking to me, his voice is all low and growly with lust, and he's got my back against the wall; he's pressing me up against it with all his weight, rude and confident and horny as a junkyard dog under a full moon.

And I have nowhere to go.

Not like I wanted to go anywhere.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I started sweating in places I didn't even know I had sweat glands.

"Yeah. I am. You wanna see it?" I panted.

Eddie laughts

"I'm gonna see it, baby."

As Eddie assures me this, he's got his had his hand up my skirt, and he was feelin' me up in a nice, slow, leisurely way, so he could watch me start to burn.

Now I'm starting to make funny noises.

"So, ya don't like wearin' a skirt? You like it better now?"

"You bet your ass I do." I snarl.

But I wasn't the only one.

At my eye level I could see Mr. Director was getting a rise in the flies.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

I looked up at him, and Eddie had this kind of wild look in his eye that caused my panties I was trying to keep neat and tidy to become rumpled and wet.

All the sudden, I was starting to like my uniform.

A lot

"How did you know I had on a pair of panties?" I gasp

"You don't sit with your knees together, ya dirty little minx." He snarls.

Right about then, I got so fuckin' horny I just about fainted.

I mean, dirty is my middle name, you know what a fucking pervert I am.

I mean, I jacked off to a pair of this guy's dirty shorts, for months, and innumerable filthy fuckbooks about him, and now here were are in his office, and Eddie's feeling me up under my uniform skirt, and growling filthy things at me.

It was right out of one of my mask fuckbooks.

I just about died and went to whatever part of heaven they send perverts like me to.

Well, the broads in those fuckbooks are usually standoffish even though they want it bad, but me, I can't play it that cool.

When I get hot, I get fucking crazy.

I mean, I like some dirty talk as much as the next girl, but talk is cheap.

I started swearing and while I was trying to climb him like a tree, I ripped his fatigue shirt open, and I made short work of his undershirt.

Buttons flew everywhere and I think I tore the flap off of one of his pockets in the effort.

Eddie laughed at me, a little, and picked me up and carried me over to his desk, and no sooner did he put me down on it I was trying to take off my panties and unzip his pants at the same time as my hands were trembling and I still had my boots on.

Good thing I got a little help from Eddie.

He didn't bother taking off my skirt, or my boots, and I didn't have to worry about my panties being dirty, because they were ripped to shreds and lying on the floor.

Jesus, I hoped the janitor put a good coat of wax on his desk, you know what I'm saying?

As for Eddie, I don't think he could quite believe just how dirty I am.

It put him right over the top.

"The door ain't even locked." He tells me.

I care?

I had my legs around him, and I was hanging on like my fucking life depended on it.

"Fuck it. Let 'em look. Let 'em all look. You're mine, you sunnuvabitch. I'm gonna break you. I'm gonna squeeze so hard I snap you in fuckin' two."

"Baby, you are just about the filthiest broad I ever knew. I'm gonna screw you into every surface of this fuckin' office, you an' your hot little pussy in that hot little skirt you barely got pulled down over your fine big ass. You ain't gonna walk outa this office on sturdy legs."

Them, he let me have it.

All of it.

Hard.

Oh man!

Did I push back?

You bet your ass I pushed back, I almost fucking knocked him over.

You ever hear of the Big Bang?

Child's play.

I mean, I think we split the fucking atom; people on 5th Avenue in their cars were incinerated in the shockwave.

And that was just the opening act.

Apparantly, when you get the Comedian all wound up, it takes some kinda fucking before he winds down.

We had some kind of dirty, horny, porny good time.

I mean, you could have put this shit in any movie theatre on 42nd Street.

Definetely the day of my dreamy little dreams.

He even let me suck him off while he sat in the big chair and smoked a cigar.

Can I say that again?

Because there was only one thing I could have taken more filthy dirty pleasure in.

You guessed it.

Then it was my turn.

Sometimes a cigar isn't just a cigar.

Oh yeah.

There are good days in life, and then there are days that are so good, they make up for the worst days you ever had.

That afternoon made up for the day I got my face smashed in, and more than half of the day part of a thirty-aught-six bullet made it through my bulletproof vest and into my guts.

And it was a good thing that fucking office was not bugged and soundproofed, because there was a whole lot of screaming and moaning and groaning going on.

I wasn't the only one doing it, let me tell you.

So, eventually, I walked out of that office on rubber legs, and I can tell you I didn't even feel like my feet were touching the ground.

Eddie came out after me, he put money in my hand and told me to take a cab, and he said some other things, but my brain wasn't picking up on half the words coming out of his mouth.

Something about getting my act together, and he was smoothing out my clothes for me.

I wanted to say something to him, but I couldn't make words.

Anyway, I floated down to 5th Avenue and I took a cab back to Eddie and Edie's place.

After a shower and a change into part of my usual clothes, I just folded myself up on the couch in the living room under a blanket and melted into an unconscious, drooling, nose-whistling pool of ultrasatisfied bliss.

I was the happiest dirty little pervert on the whole fucking planet Earth.

You know what the best thing about that whole day was?

It was only Monday.

Which meant Thursday was yet to come.

Man, if that ain't the fucking greatest, I don't know what is.

* * *

**IV: Eddie**

As it was his custom, after work, the Comedian went to the house in Bensonhurst to change out of his costume.

Edie was usually awake, waiting up for him, but tonight, she had a strange question.

"Hey, Eddie, what do you want me to do with Liv?"

"What?"

"She floated in here around four, opened the fridge, stuffed half a sandwich somebody had left in there in her mouth, washed it down with a beer in two gulps, then floated up to the john. She came down into the living room in her underwear, dropped her boots and her knapsack, pulled the blanket off the back of the couch, got under it and sacked out, completely. She's still there."

"Just let the kid sleep. She'll drive home in the morning. She probably just got drunk at lunch."

Edie looked at Eddie like he had three heads.

"She didn't come in smellin' like a brewery, Eddie, she came in smellin' like a whorehouse, smiling from ear to ear, like somebody just made all of her dirty little dreams come true."

"Okay, then she spent the afternoon with some guy."

"Some guy, huh? Just some guy, and who the fuck knows who he could be, right? Eddie, if you wanna keep it under your hat you're bangin' Liv Napier, you gotta try a little harder. First of all, don't do it in broad daylight in a government office. That's a little obvious. See, she always parks her car here when she's gotta go downtown, ya know that. So, when she blows outa here in her S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, bitching that she hates wearing a skirt, it makes her feel like everybody's looking at her ass, I figure, well, maybe she's goin to go see my brother, Mr. Director of Covert Operations. Then, she blows back in here, much later, with her hair all undone, her uniform all in disarray, shirt buttoned wrong and a great big faraway smile on her face, takes a shower, changes into her OD undies, sacks out on the couch and leaves her black uniform and blue bra, no panties, in a pile on the bathroom floor for me to scoop up. As laundry is my business, and I'm no stranger to Liv's laundry, I decide to wash her uniform, as not only does it literally smell like fuck, the inside of the skirt has come stains on it. Now I know you, Eddie. I been cleanin' your passion pit, uptown since you rented it out in 1946. Hell, I know myself. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, with you and me, and maybe neither of us turned out to be a sicko like Pop, but we're both wound as tight as he was. Next time you invite your teenage terror to the office to bounce her off the walls a little, make her bring an extra uniform, an' some clean underwear, shower on site, and send her home in a cab."

"I had her in to talk business."

"Yeah? What happened?"

"We talked business. But, I never saw the kid in women's clothes before, an' she don't know how to sit with her knees together. So, I lost my cool. Almost like the trophy room."

"Almost?"

"Yeah. Except I woulda stopped this time, if I hadda. But I didn't hafta. Not for the kid."

Eddie smiled, in spite of himself.

"She doesn't have any cool. That girl fuckin' drives me crazy. I never got a chance to lock the door. She ripped a pocket offa my shirt, tore it open so hard she ripped off half the buttons, ripped my undershirt in two. She tore right through the button holes. An' I'm talkin' a canvas fatigue shirt. Cursin' an' snarlin, an tearin' at my clothes like if she didn't get off she was gonna die."

Edie just laughed.

"You started it, din'cha? And you look tired, Eddie. Real tired."

"I am tired. Jesus Christ. So, I can trust you to keep your trap shut about this, can't I, Edie?"

"Sure you can. Why do youse think I'm givin' you advice? Now go wake your girl up and pack her off to her car so she can go home."

"She ain't my girl, Edie."

"Yeah, Eddie. Right."


	3. A Bit of the Old Ultraviolence

**Chapter Three: A Bit of the Old Ultraviolence**

**Peter "Boots" Marcano's Pizzeria, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 1968**

Frankie Bear was a little nuts.

He came by it honestly, his mother was one of the Blake sisters, albeit the History teacher at PS 104 wasn't as colourful as some of her family members.

Her two older sisters, Edie and Aggie, were both the common law wives of the same man, a big Russkie guy covered almost from head to toe in tattoos from prison camp in Siberia who was known around town as Ivan the Bear.

That was one of Frankie's uncle's.

Not even mentioning his uncle Eddie.

And Boots Marcano, Frankie's father, well you would never meet anybody who didn't like Boots, but he was such a funny guy, such a joker that you knew he had to be a little nuts.

Frankie Bear, though, he was crazier than both of them.

The old-timers, they could see Mick the Merciless in him, even though his cousin Paulie looked more like Mick than Frankie did. But you could see a lot of Mick in Frankie, in spirit if not in looks.

Frankie was just about as crazy as his grandfather.

A lot of the time he wore the same kind of George Raft and Jimmy Cagney gangster suits, when he wasn't working, and you would never catch him, even behind the counter, without his grandfather's fedora on.

A gift from his Uncle Eddie, who always said that Frankie reminded him of his father's good points, without having the bad.

But unlike Mickey Blake, Frankie Bear wasn't a bad guy, he just had a bad temper and he was a little nuts; he had a good heart, like Boots, and as long as he kept his cool, he was alright.

He got into some scrapes with the law, crazy as he was when he was about 15, 16, crazy shit he did because of his bad temper, but it was nothing major, nobody got hurt really bad, and he didn't even end up in juvie, because his Uncle Eddie got him out of the jackpot and into the National Guard at 17.

Military discipline is good for some people.

It worked for Frankie.

He graduated high school, and started working for his father and for the Harlequin, and he settled down.

People called him Frankie Bear partly because of his disposition.

Most of the time he was more like Frankie Teddy Bear, but he could turn into Frankie Grizzly Bear on a dime.

The other part was because he looked like one.

He was short and broad shouldered and stocky and hairy like his Sicilian father, but aside from his Roman nose, and olive skin, he had that same Irish rogue face as Mick the Merciless

To top it all off, Frankie had two different colored eyes, just like Mick had.

One brown and one blue.

But, crazy though Frankie Bear might have been, he was far from dumb.

That's why, after a look out the window, the oldest son of Boots Marcano and Ruthie Blake, hurried out from the kitchen counter, his woolly, bushy brown hair and bristly black beard both still bound in hairnets, with his sauce and pepperoni grease stained apron still on.

"What's the rush?" Boots asked.

"Napalm's here, Pop! It's Napalm!"

That made everybody in the place take notice.

Trivelino J. "Napalm" Napier, 18, weighing in at about a buck forty five and change, some of it muscle, and some of it dangerous curves, and having acceded to the great height of five feet, so far, entered the pizzeria with the confident bouncing swagger of a giant.

Because, especially in Brooklyn, a giant is what she was.

You could mistake her for a little Irish girl, pretty and tough and spunky, with her red hair and her green eyes and that thousand watt smile she wore when she was in a good mood.

But…

For one thing, her father was three different prominent native sons.

Dr. John O'Rourke Napier, owner and operator of Napier Chemical, on the waterfront.

"Crazy Jack" Napier, the Red Hood, evil-genius gangster, extraordinare.

And, of course, his most famous and lasting incarnation, The Joker, Clown Prince of Crime, who was the only supervillain with a seat on the Commission.

Allegedly.

Her late mother, Merrie Damiano, had been Bensonhurst's resident witch, just as her mother, Magdelene Malloy Damiano had been in East New York.

Magdelena was still alive and well, and practised her venerable trade from a room in the back of her husband, Rocky Damiano's shoe shop, still located on Fulton St., in East New York.

That kind of pedigree would have been enough, especially in Brooklyn, but Napalm had built her own distinguished reputation.

Of mainly Irish, but, through Rocky, also Sicilian descent, Napalm had established herself as a mover and a shaker at the tender age of 11, after showing an already well-developed sense of territory by running a pill-pushing teenager out of the park where she and her friends played.

He came back with a knife, and little Napalm, who was pretty much born with one hand in a fist, armed herself with a brick.

At the end of the fracas, the teenager was unconscious in the street and Napalm, although having been stabbed, was still standing.

Bloody brick in hand.

But that was only the entre'acte.

Later that year, a small-time nobody who wasn't connected to anybody in particular walked up to the window of John "Mac" McClatchey's car, parked on Fulton Street in East New York and aimed a .38 special into it.

He was collecting on an old debt with Mac's dead brother, Kevin.

Mac was looking after Napalm while Crazy Jack was cooling his heels in Arkham Asylum, and he, a simple longshoreman, didn't carry a gun.

But, Crazy Jack's daughter did.

One bullet from the .38 passed through Mac's chest and Liv's arm, breaking it.

Four .45 calibre bullets from the gun the Joker had given his daughter and taught her to use when she was a child of six made their way into the assassin.

Two in the head.

Two in the heart.

That was also the year she got her first tattoo.

Curtain up, Trivelino J. Napier proceeded to spend her adolescence drinking, fighting, brawling and screwing her way through the borough that was her home in the best tradition of hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-boiled Brooklyn Irish thugs.

Along the way, this latest mad genius in the Napier line also graduated college at 18, and was working with Dr. Manhattan in his laboratory.

More in the interest of the town, she was known to be an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and rumour had it that the Harlequin and Napalm were one and the same person.

Everyone in New York City knew that if you couldn't get justice downtown in the courthouse, or if the police couldn't or wouldn't help you, if you were unfortunate and forgotten by cops, lawyers, judges and superheroes alike, or if you just plain didn't trust corrupt politicians and feared getting wound up in wiseguy vendettas and Devil's bargains, you called the Harlequin.

That was what she always said.

If you want justice, Call the Harlequin.

I always get the job done.

The other thing about Napalm, when she became a mask, because most everybody in Brooklyn you talked to thought she and the Harlequin were one in the same, she didn't go all uptown.

You didn't see her on a podium with the mayor talking about interplanetary relations, and when Dr. Doom or somebody brought a space creature to tear up 5th Avenue in Manhattan, you would usually find Liv laughing it up at Boots' Pizzeria, or at Trivelino Mac's, shaking her head at the TV and saying the price of living high on the Upper East Side was more than just real estate.

Supervillains didn't send monsters or armies to the Lower East Side.

Or to Park Slope, Carnasie, or Bensonhurst, for that matter.

Or real toilets, like the Bowery and the South Bronx, and Bushwick.

Those were the places the Harlequin defended, all of the above.

Real neighbourhoods with real people living in them, who had real big problems most masks didn't give a shit about.

And the Harlequin didn't have heat vision or a ray gun, or a bunch of wonderous devices or a black belt in something that sounded like it came from a Chinese menu.

She had guns, a knife, a machete and a bulletproof vest, and a heaping helping of East New York and Bensonhurst street-fighting, bar-brawling fuck you for any hood, crook, or punk that tangled with her, and she had it because she worked for it; she trained every day and hit the street almost every night.

Hard work, that was something people in the places she defended could really understand.

As for Liv, if you were looking for her, you'd probably find her in Brooklyn.

Maybe at Mac's, or at Boots' place, maybe at the Blake's house, or in that little park she'd made her territory years ago.

Possibly at her grandparents' place in East New York, maybe on a nice day bumming around in Prospect Park, or on a really nice day, at Coney Island, or Manhattan Beach.

She always talked about moving back to the old neighbourhood when she finished up with grad school; there was a warehouse building on the waterfront just a stone's throw from the ruins of Napier Chemical, under which she had grown up, that she had her eye on.

Yes, she was a real native son.

Trivelino J. Napier loved Brooklyn, and for the most part, Brooklyn loved Trivelino J. Napier.

Even wiseguys, who were not too fond of some masks, they got a big kick out of Liv.

For one thing, with her mask on, she made a lot of trouble for half-assed supervillains and small time street punks, the kind of people that got in their way of doing business. Plenty of guys with their hands in the cookie jar, guys getting high on their own supply, doing side deals and shaking marks down too hard that they would have had to take care of, the Harlequin took care of, in the course of her business.

They liked the way she did things; it was pretty close to the way they did things.

Napalm did her business, and unless your business got in the way of her doing hers, she left you alone

For a third, her father was Crazy Jack Napier, the Joker.

Next to Carlo Gambino, there was nobody bigger in New York.

And so it was, for many reasons, that Napalm was larger than life.

A status which, some of the made guys jokingly noted, she bore not like the short-tempered, good-natured brawling Irishwoman that she chiefly professed to be, but with the self-assured gravity of a Sicilian don.

Her long red ponytails swinging down to her waist, the heavily tattooed Napalm, in her customary Levi's, sneakers and military issue OD A-line undershirt sat at here usual table with a Godfather's gravitas.

She came in with Joe Mac McClatchey, Mac's son, a tall, wiry, blond young man with shoulder length hair and a handlebar moustache who shared with Napalm a passion for cars.

He was the assistant mechanic at Mason's Auto on the Lower East Side, where he and Napalm spent many hours under the hood.

Most of the time you saw Joe he was in mechanic's coveralls, and no matter how cleaned up he got, there was always a little grease under his fingernails.

Joe Mac was the kind of guy who said little and saw much, and though he didn't go around picking fights, if you fucked with him, or with Napalm, you weren't going to be happy.

He was a good guy to have at your back, and he was 100 per cent loyal to Napalm, to the point where he made it his business to look around for guys he heard didn't treat her so good, and give them a good beating.

Like a lot of gearheads, Joe was one tough son of a bitch.

Napalm nodded to Frankie Bear.

He came and sat with them.

"Taken any calls for this week, Bear?" she asked.

Liv sat back in the chair cracking her knuckles that had "Hell" tattooed on the left hand and "Fire" on the right.

You could plainly see the skull and crossbones tattooed on the back of her right hand when she and Frankie spoke, but less obvious was the representation of the Third Eye tattooed in the palm of her left hand.

Frankie Bear felt free to speak in his father's pizzeria, and after they discussed the week's work, as was usual for Saturday nights, some other familiar neighbourhood residents, and friends of Napalm's began to stagger in.

First was Crazy Paulie Blake, who walked with the swagger of a giant because he was one.

He was 18 years old, like Napalm, but already six foot two and two hundred pounds.

He had a few more years of growing, and showed all the signs he would eventually be as big as his Russkie father, Ivan the Bear, and the man he was almost a carbon copy of, his uncle, Col. Edward Morgan Blake, another local lad made good.

Most of the Blake family were crazy, in one way or another, but Paulie was an especially eccentric lad.

The only people in the neighbourhood tattooed heavier than him were Napalm, and of course his Gulag-educated father, Ivan, who had proudly done all his son's and Napalm's tattoos.

The most obvious of these were the words "Live Freaky, Die Freaky" tattooed across crazy Paulie's broad, hirsute chest.

Paulie also sported long, thick, wavy brown hair which he had not cut since 1965 that was creeping down his back, and a long brown beard that he wore in two braids.

Commonly he wore Levis and a vest, so that his tattoos were always on display, affecting such things as a jacket or shirts only in colder weather.

You know, if it was less than 35 degrees.

Paulie shared with his father an affinity for Clark Gable's maxim in "The Misfits", "Anything's better than wages." He was currently a student at NYU, but made his living in odd jobs, some odder than Ivan's, even, who at lest paid lip service to the taxman by working off and on driving a garbage truck back and forth from the Fountain Avenue dump.

This, people said, whether she was a superhero as well as a spook, or not, was probably very advantageous to Napalm in her line of work.

With Paulie was his brother, Pat Blake, a year older and a shade bigger, with brick red hair down to his collar and a neat moustache.

Pat looked a lot like his father, but he got his red hair from his mother, Aggie Blake.

He was the more stable of the two brothers; he worked on the garbage truck full time and was also considering college; Pat had an affinity for chemistry.

He only had two tattoos, and, unlike his brother who was full off strutting bravado, was a big, quiet young man who had been married since he was 16, no kids yet, and still lived with his wife at the Blake home in Bensonhurst.

Probably to keep an eye on his crazy brother.

The next arrival was the biggest of all, "Big Benny" Benjamin Grossmann, whose parents ran Grossmann's Deli in Manhattan on 5th Avenue, which was open all day and all night except for the hours between 3 and 5 AM.

Benny, who was Pat's age, worked the night shift.

His three main interests in life were masks, progressive rock, and comic books.

He wore glasses and a neat moustache and beard, and didn't wear his hair too long.

Although Benny was close to seven feet tall and probably weighed about 300 pounds, he wasn't a violent guy, probably because he didn't have to be.

Like Pat, he was a voice of reason.

Not so with Skinny Donazio.

People had been calling him Skinny since he was a little boy.

Skinny was five feet tall by the time he was five years old, but you could have mailed him in an envelope.

By the time he was 16, and he was six foot six, an immense size for a full-blooded Italian, he had filled out some, but, at close to seven feet, like Big Benny, Skinny probably weighed a hundred pounds, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds less.

Nobody knew where Skinny came from, he always said he didn't remember being anybody but Skinny and he only knew his name was Donazio because it was written on the back of his underwear. His earliest memories started when he was about 6, and they were of living by his wits and eating and washing up at school, pretending he lived somewhere, and sleeping in Prospect Park. Skinny, to his good fortune, met Paulie Blake, and his older brother and cousin Pat and Frankie. The Marcanos took Skinny in when he was seven, and he had been living with them as a second son ever since.

Skinny was Paulie and Napalm's age, and he had been Paulie's man Friday since they were six, and Paulie began to bring him home or to his Aunt Ruthie's house after he discovered Skinny didn't live anywhere.

Paulie would start a sentence and Skinny would finish it, that's the way it was between them.

Nominally, Skinny belonged to the Lucchese family, how, nobody really knew, because Skinny never did a dishonest thing a day in his life, but he made his living as a high-rise construction worker.

He wore a beard, a goatee and a soul patch, all jet-black, and his tightly curled hair wouldn't grow down, only out, so it grew from his head in a messy halo that he occasionally tamed with the same razor he used to carefully shape his beard, and moustache.

There were two other women in the group.

One of them was Rosie Juarez, who was Puerto-Rican, Italian, Irish and a total knockout.

She was Paulie Blake's girl, and was studying pre-law on a scholarship at NYU.

Rosie was a perfectly normal girl, other than the fact that she worked a nudie booth in Times Square and made the occasional porno movie, because that was how she got her kicks.

Paulie, who was as much of a ladykiller as his Uncle Eddie, didn't mind.

Rounding out Napalm's merry band was a genuine publicly known superhero, Laurie Juspeczyk, the Silk Spectre, Part II.

She wasn't a regular member of the gang, but she was very close with Paulie, Pat and Napalm.

Of course, the good reason articulated was that her mother, Sally Jupiter, the first Silk Spectre was best friends with Edie Blake, and Edie, Paulie's mother, was her babysitter.

However, it wasn't hard when you looked at Laurie, who was tall, with brown hair and brown eyes, and had the infamous Blake temper, to see the resemblance not just to Edie, but to her twin brother, Eddie.

Eddie, who was practically Laurie's, ahem, stepfather, as he and Sally both hated to love and loved to hate one another.

The local wiseguys jokingly referred to this motley lot as Napalm's crew, and they were known around town as the Jokers.

Some people claimed that there was a lot of truth in this.

Napalm's friends were her eyes and ears on the street, and although none of them, not even the girls were shrinking violets, they were just your usual Brooklyn tough.

Not like Napalm.

Whether or not she was the Harlequin, the woman with the Russian gulag saying "You can die today—I'll die tomorrow" tattooed across her chest right under her collarbone, in Gaelic between the straps of her tank top was a well-trained, stone-cold killer, with a hair-trigger temper and a capacity for ultraviolence that was legendary, even at the tender age of 18.

Boots brought two pizzas and a pile of dishes to the table, and Liv began passing them around.

As she and her friends started to eat, two connected guys, Gambinos, Johnny Gotti and Quack-Quack Ruggiero came in for lunch.

Johnny had just gotten out of the slammer, on a beef he had little trouble beating the rap.

"Hey, Napalm! You're still alive, huh?"

"You got that right, Johnny. They gimme a nice new smile bigger'n the one I already got, an' I hadda have, like 16 fuckin' transfusions, but I am alive."

"Hey, Ange. Lookit this new tattoo she's got. Holy fuck, Napalm, whadda they call that? Irish knots?"

"Somethin' like that."

"Lookit that. It goes alla way around ya neck, an in front, alla way down to the other tattoo. Jesus, that musta taken a long time."

"Eight hours. It's supposta gimme good luck, and protection from _malocchio_. Besides, don't want nobody to forget."

Napalm touched the fresh knife scar on her throat, stretching from ear to ear.

"So, I know Ivan the Bear gave you the fancy new tattoo, but what about the smile?"

Liv turned away from her pizza.

"Oh, I know all about them. You'll be hearin' about them real soon, Johnny. You better get your boots on and roll up your socks. Because there's gonna be blood in the streets."

She gave him a big, bone-chilling Joker smile that made the wiesguy think that bodies were going to start showing up in obvious places.

That was one thing about Napalm.

She was a stone-cold motherfucker.

"Nobody fucks with you, huh?"

"That's night. Nobody fucks with Trivelino J. Napier. Nobody."

**Grossmann's Diner, 5****th**** Avenue, Manhattan, 1968. Late Night**

**I: Paul**

"Skinny, does that cocksucker hunched over a turkey and swiss on rye look familiar to you?"

Skinny looked up from his food.

"He looks like one of those motherfuckers who tried to do Napalm! One of those C of H dudes! From the pictures she gave us."

"That's what I thought, too."

"What do we do, Paulie?"

"Go ask Benny what he thinks."

Skinny was about to do that, when the man looked over at them, picked up his tray and threw out his food and headed towards the door.

"Sorry. I don't eat in places where they serve mutie scum." He said as he passed.

He was a pretty big guy, twice Paulie's age and about as big as his father or his uncle, but Paule wasn't exactly small, and his father and his uncle had taught him to fight. He unfolded himself very rapidly, indeed, from his chair and gave the guy a roundhouse to the face and an uppercut to the jaw.

The man reeled, and Skinny came up behind him, spun him around, and hit him again.

The dude went down.

That was about as far into it as Skinny and Paulie had ever been.

Just your average fistfight.

They had no idea what to do next.

Meanwhile, Benny just about shit himself.

"What the fuck? What the fuck! What the fuck are you assholes doing in my place? Outside! You fight outside! If there's a mess on the floor, my Mom will kill me! What the fuck was…hey, isn't that one of the guys we're looking for?"

"Yeah." Paulie said.

"Shit. Fuck! What do we do with him now?" Benny asked.

"Is he dead?" Skinny asked.

"No, he ain't fuckin' dead! I can see his chest movin' up an' down. Shit, I guess we should take him to Napalm." Benny suggested.

"Yeah. But where is she?" Paulie asked.

"We gotta take him someplace. I hafta clean up this mess." Benny added.

"I still think he's dead." Skinny opined.

"Paulie, think like your Uncle. What would he do?" Benny decided

"Besides kill this waste?" Paulie asked.

"Yeah. Napalm said that she and Eddie need these dudes alive. At least, temporarily."

"Well, I guess we can carry him into the kitchen and tie him up. How about that?" Paulie asked.

"It's a start. I'll clean up the mess, then I'll call Frankie Bear. I know he's working late tonight."

"Frankie? Why?"

"He's in the fuckin' National Guard. He gotta know somethin' about this kinda shit. Then I'll try Joe Mac. He can get us a car we can get this guy outa here in." Benny replied.

"Good idea."

Benny got on the phone.

"Hey, Mr. Marcano. Can I talk to Frankie Bear…Frankie? It's Benny. We got one. Get your ass over here, like, fuckin' yesterday. An' call Joe. Tell him to bring over some rope, and a tarp. And a car with a big trunk. I got a mess to clean up."

Benny hung up.

The three teenagers looked at the man on the floor.

"Fuck." Benny observed.

"Shit, man! Fuck!" Skinny agreed

"Ya know somethin'? We are way outa out league, here." Paulie observed.

In the back room, the dude started coming to while Paulie and Skinny were tying him up with duct tape.

Paulie picked up a salami, and hit him with it.

That didn't work.

The guy started going on about dirty mutie scum, again.

Paulie felt along the counter and his hand closed around the handle of a meat cleaver.

He asked himself, "What would Uncle Eddie do?"

He chopped one end of the dude's moustache off with it.

"Shut the fuck up, motherfucker! You shut the fuck up! Lemme hear one more fuckin' word outa your mouth, an' I'll chop your fuckin' cock off, and shut you up with it! Alright?"

The man shut up.

Skinny tore a piece off the roll of duct tape, and handed it to Paulie, who put it over the guy's mouth.

Paulie wasn't sure what to do next, so he continued to think about how this guy almost killed his friend, how he had probably murdered innocent people in cold blood, burned them alive, maybe.

It kept his anger up, and the fear that he was feeling because he was in over his head down, and he continued to scowl and brandish the cleaver, and hope this dude didn't figure out that neither he or Skinny were prepared to kill anybody.

Finally, Frankie Bear came in, in his pinstriped George Raft sportcoat over an undershirt and a pair of Levi's, with his fedora jammed on his head lower than usual.

He had a Hefty bag over his shoulder, and he was wearing the handgun they Army issued to him in a shoulder holster.

"Okay. I'm gonna spread out the tarp, and you guys put fucko on it. Then we'll roll him up, and tie it shut, and take him out the back. Joe's waitin' with a car."

Now Frankie, he was nuts, and in the Army.

Maybe, if push came to shove, he would do it.

"Hey, guys? We gotta cut in a hole so he can breathe." Skinny pointed out.

"You think me an' Paulie don't know that?" Frankie asked

"Well, yeah, because you ain't doin' it."

They carried the trussed up man outside, where Joe Mac was waiting in a huge '59 Plymouth sedan.

Frankie Bear opened the trunk, Paulie and Skinny put their prisoner inside, closed the trunk, and then they all got inside.

"Okay. So, where do we take him?" Joe Mac asked.

"Fuck! Frankie, go in and ask Benny if he got hold of Napalm." Paulie exclaimed.

Joe lit up a cigarette.

"I can't believe this shit. You guys could fuck up a one-car funeral, man! Jeeziz!"

"Hey, shut the fuck up, man! We're new to this shit!" Skinny replied.

Frankie came out of the diner.

"Benny says he couldn't get shit. And the place is full of customers. We're fucked."

"Goddamn it, Frankie, your like, in the fuckin' National Guard, man! Don't they train you for this shit?"

"Hey, fuck you, Paulie! Fuck you, man! I musta been sick the weekend they covered Getting Rid of Some Terrorist Cat's Body!"

"Well! You're the one who's supposedta be so much like Old Pop! Do somethin' he woulda done!"

"What? Like grease the guy? Whaddya want me ta do? Get out my piece an' shoot him through the closed trunk, like Jimmy Cagney?"

Meanwhile, Joe was getting real antsy.

"Fuck that shit! You can't put holes in this car, or get blood on it! Ya know, this is some cat's car I borrowed. I'm supposed to be fixin' the motherfucker. I mean, I can't drive around inna thing all night. An' you assholes can't be fuckin' it up!"

"Okay, Joe, that's it! Fuck you! Haul your ass outa the car!"

"Fuck you, Frankie."

"Fuck me, huh?"

Frankie started punching the car, and yelling, making dents with his meaty fists

"You crazy motherfucker!" Joe yelled.

He got out, and Paulie got between the two of them.

"Will you guys fuckin' relax? We got a guy in the trunk, remember?

Frankie and Joe Mac knew that, it was why they were both so on edge.

"Okay! Okay! I'm sorry, Joe. I guess I'll pay for the damage I did."

"Fuck it. It ain't that bad. So what do we do?"

Frankie thought about it.

_Well, Old Pop, what do we do? _ He asked.

The voice in his mind that was probably him talking to himself, but which Frankie was sure was Mickey Blake, himself, communicating from the beyond, replied in the familiar Brooklyn tough guy accent mixed with an Irish brogue.

_Take him to the dump, Frankie lad. You know what to do with him there, don't you?_

"We'll have to take him out to the Fountain Avenue dump in Brooklyn, grease him, chop him up, an' get rid of the body." Frankie said, calmly.

He didn't feel calm, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do.

So, he took his apron out of the Hefty bag.

"Man, Frankie, you really are Old Pop's grandson, ain't you?" Paulie commented.

"What? That's what Uncle Eddie would do with this waste." Frankie said.

"Well, are you gonna do it? Grease him?"

"Me? I'm in the Guard, man, and I'm on probation! I can't just kill some motherfucker! What about you guys?"

"We already did our part." Skinny protested.

"Will you dudes she the fuck up about that shit? Frankie, when you say customers, do you mean normal people or superheroes?" Joe Mac asked.

"Both." Frankie replied.

Joe put his head down on the steering wheel.

"Man, I am gonna fuck you cats up! Bad!"

"I see where you're goin', Joe! There might be somebody in there who might help us out!" Paulie realised.

He got out of the car.

"Frankie, watch the trunk. I'm goin' back in."

* * *

Wolverine was not a regular customer at Grossmann's, a mask's home away from home, but he had been a block away at the Avengers Mansion, talking to Cap, and figured he'd stop by and grab some grub, as he'd been there enough times to know it was a good place to go.

He wasn't surprised when Eddie's nephew Paulie came in; Paulie practically lived at Grossman's.

But, even as the kid was trying to look real casual, Logan could literally smell fear and adrenaline coming off him in waves.

He could have sworn he also smelled fresh blood when he came in.

Something had to be up.

Paulie sat down with him.

"Hiya, Logan."

"Hey, Paulie. You havin' a little problem in here? Because, I smell trouble."

"Ummm, yeah. You think maybe you can come outside with me?"

Logan followed Paulie outside, to an old Plymouth, where, looking like he was itching to do something crazy, one of Eddie's other nephews, Frankie Bear, was giving the trunk some dirty looks.

"Logan! Boy, am I glad to see you. They were gonna make me kill this guy! Or at least cut him up in little pieces?" Frankie said.

"What guy? What the fuck did you boys do?"

Paulie interrupted.

"We got a guy in the trunk. He's C of H. One of the assholes who tried to grease our friend, Napalm. He called me dirty mutie scum…"

Skinny cranked down the window.

"No, Paulie, he was talking to me."

"Skinny, you're passin'. Nobody knows you're a mutant. He called me dirty mutie scum because everybody knows there's a mutant or two in the Blake family tree, and to these C of H fuckers, that makes everybody dirty mutie scum."

"You're a mutant, kid?" Wolverine asked Skinny.

"Yeah. You wanna see my mutation? I never get to show anybody! Watch this."

Skinny got out of the car and went and leaned up against the wall, of the building, and it looked like he became part of it.

It just looked like somebody had taped or glued some clothes to the bricks, and there was a pair of shoes set up by the wall.

Then, he moved.

"Pretty cool, huh? I can fit under the cracks in doors, too, and if I fall down, I glide like Rocky the Flying Squirrel."

"You know what, kid? That really is a good one. What do you do?"

"High rise construction worker. Heights don't scare me."

Logan laughed.

"Me neither."

He opened the trunk.

_Snikt!_

"Okay, bub, I just wanted ta letcha know the 7th Cavalry is here. No funny stuff, or I'll gut you like a motherfuckin' fish, ya mutant-killin' cocksucker."

Paulie was glad to see a look of real fear on the prisoner's face.

Logan slammed the trunk lid shut.

"Are you gonna grease him?" Frankie asked.

"Nobody says that anymore, Frankie. The word you're lookin' for is whack. And no, I'm not. Not right now, anyway. I'm goin over to the front, to get on the radio on my bike. I'll be right back. Everybody get in the car."

They all waited in the car, feeling pleased with themselves.

Logan opened the passenger door, and Paulie got out and got in the back with Skinny and Frankie Bear.

"Where to?" Joe asked.

"Where else. The dump on Fountain Avenue." Logan told him.

"See! I told you! I fuckin' told you, man!" Frankie insisted.

"Shut the fuck up, Frankie." Joe told him.

"Will you quit tellin' me to shut the fuck up! I'll break your fuckin' nose!"

Now that was something Frankie would do, and Joe was just about in the mood to throw down with him, but he figured, fuck it.

Later.

Get this shit over with.

Joe drove the car right through the open gates, and followed Logan's directions, until Paulie saw his Uncle and Napalm, in their S.H.I.E.L.D. fatigues, waiting.

She came up to the window.

"You guys did real good, man. I knew I could count on my crew."

"Hey, live freaky, die freaky, baby." Paulie said.

Skinny and Frankie echoed the crew's motto.

"Yunno, I think we should all get 'Live Freaky, Die Freaky" tattoos. Like Paulie's. I'm gonna talk to Ivan about that. As soon as I get word from Frisco that I can organize us into a chapter. Okay, guys, here's the trip. Joe, take Frankie back to the pizza joint. An' Skinny an' Paulie back to Grossmann's. When you get back to Mason's, a guy will be waiting for you. You'll know him. You two are gonna wipe the car clean. Don't tell Dan anything. If he wants to know where the fuck you went tonight, tell him you went out to ball some chick. Now, alla you guys, remember, none of this shit happened? Okay?"

They all agreed.

Meanwhile, Eddie had popped the trunk.

"Whoa! Somebody worked this cocksucker over pretty good." He commented.

"That was us, Uncle Eddie! I hit him twice and Skinny hit him once." Paulie said.

"Yeah? You boys did good. But this is where we wade into the dirty end of the pool, so you better get the fuck outa here. C'mon kid, we got work to do. Hey, Jimmy, you want a piece of this?"

"Some C of H motherfucker? Hell, yeah!"

_Snikt!_

Logan got out.

"Alright, you guys gut the fuck outa here. You don't want any part of this." Eddie told them.

As they drove off, Paulie looked out the back window.

"What are they gonna do to him, you think?" Skinny asked.

"They're gonna make him talk." Joe opined.

"Yeah. Then they'll kill him." Paulie replied.

"And make him disappear." Frankie finished.

"They don't even need knives or saws. They got Wolverine." Skinny added.

All of them thought about it.

Out of all of them, Frankie had done the most violent thing.

A Puerto-Rican kid came to Marcano's, and started hitting on Frankie's girlfriend, cursing and strutting around and making a scene.

Frankie told him to get the fuck out, and the kid told Frankie to go fuck himself, shoved him, and spit on the floor.

Frankie decked him.

The Puerto Rican kid got up from the ground, picked up a chair, and threw it through the window of the pizzeria.

Enraged, Frankie hot him again, hard enough to knock him out, this time.

He ran outside, screaming and raving, and slashed the Puerto Rican kid's tires with a switchblade.

Then, he put his hat over his fist and smashed out the guy's windows, mirrors, headlights and tail-lights.

When the kid came to, he rushed Frankie, and punched him in the face, breaking his nose, then he grabbed a bottle from the trash and broke it over Frankie's thick head.

Frankie hit the kid back, breaking his jaw, and stabbed the Puerto-Rican dude in the leg.

That was what he was on probation for.

That was it.

It was a big deal, but compared to torturing a confession out of a terrorist, killing him, and cutting him up into bits, it wasn't shit.

"Jesus. Fuck, alla sudden my stomach don't feel too good." Skinny said.

"Yeah. Jesus, man, I'm alone tonight at the shop. That shit's freakin' me out." Frankie realised.

"You guys don't hafta clean the car. Shit, man, after this shit is over, I'm gettin' drunk. Dan's always got a shitload of beer in the basement; it stays cold, there. You cats come over later, we'll get smashed. You got some weed, Paulie?" Joe said.

"Yeah. I do. I'll bring it."

"Fuck, man, this is, like, what Napalm does every motherfuckin' day, man." Skinny interjected.

"No wonder she's a fuckin' drunk." Skinny replied.

"Hey, shut the fuck up, man!" Joe barked.

"Yeah!" Frankie added.

"What? She admits it."

"Yeah, well she also says she's a whore, an' that ain't true." Joe added.

"Yeah. I mean, I been fuckin' her, a coupla nights a month, like for a coupla years, and Joe's been bangin' her at least once a week since he was 13. We wouldn't do that if she was a whore." Frankie said.

Paulie started to laugh.

"What?"

"Frankie, that didn't come out right." Joe explained.

"Awww, fuck youse guys, man. Fuck alla youse." He said.

* * *

"Rorschach?"

"Hurm?"

"Did something weird go down last night? I was…out late."

"Yes. Fornicating with the Twilight Lady."

"You make it sound so dirty and wrong!"

"It is, Daniel. Why do you ask?"

"Because when I came in the basement secret door, Joe Mac, Paulie Blake, Skinny Donazio and Frank Marcano were all sitting around, on top of crates and boxes, and they were completely unconscious. They drank three cases of Heineken between them, and the whole place smelled like weed. I woke them up, and Joe said they had a heavy night."

Rorschach recalled how he and Hollis Mason cleaned the Plymouth while Joe Mac spent some time vomiting in the bathroom.

"They got a little too close to what it is that Harlequin does, Daniel." He said.

"Oh God! She didn't have those boys do any killing for her, did she?"

"No. But they realised that's part of what she has to do."

"Why do they let themselves get involved?"

"Why are we partners, Daniel?"

"Oh. I guess you're right about that. You don't think I'm doing anything weird and sick with her, do you? The Twilight Lady, I mean?"

"I'm sure you're not. You aren't the type, Daniel. But, you should find a more suitable woman."

"I guess you're right."

They both knew, however, that he wouldn't.

**Mason's Auto, Lower East Side, Manhattan, 1968. Night.**

**I: Eddie**

The Comedian, leaning against one of the support beams of Mason's garage, took a thoughtful drag on his cigar.

He decided it had been a good idea, re-assigning Agent Napier to covert.

It was a helluva thing, watching the kid work.

If she could ever get her boozing and her brawling under control, she could really be the kind of mask he might want to show a thing or to about how you really did this fucking job.

"Not ready to talk yet, huh? Hey, Boss, canya think of a worse death than bein' slowly crushed to death under a hydraulic lift while transmission fluid from a '59 Plymouth drips into your wide, starin' eyes?"

Eddie couldn't help it.

He had to laugh.

"Ya know somethin', kid? That sounds like a pretty bad death to me."

"Me too. I guess fucko, here, is braver than both of us."

"Fucko", in this case, was Jefferson Roberts, one of the at-large members of the New York Metro Area cell of the Church of Humanity who had successfully kidnapped and tortured Level 5 S.H.I.E.L.D Agent Trivelino J. Napier, but, despite having slit her throat, failed to kill her, or get any information out of her.

After weeks of legwork and your standard Sherlock Holmes kind of shit, and the break of one of the guys on their list eating at Grossmann's, they had finally located Jeff Roberts and one of his fellow C of H members, and, to the asshole's credit, he was just as unwilling to talk as the kid had been.

The difference was, the C of H dealt in beatings, rubber hoses and electric shocks.

Child's play.

While Harlequin drove to the Lower East Side in Roberts' car, the Comedian had, in a thorough and professional fashion, taken care of the beating without even asking Roberts any questions.

Eddie, who knew his beatings, figured this one was worth about two weeks in the hospital and maybe another two weeks home in bed.

Not that Roberts was likely to see either, anytime soon.

Once they were at Mason's, Eddie bound Roberts, and then the kid, in a flash of evil genius that was very much Crazy Jack, tied him to the bottom of one of Mason's hydraulic lifts.

He was a hundred percent sure that if Roberts didn't start singing like Tweety Bird, the kid was going to drop the lift, '59 Plymouth leaking tranny fluid , and all right the fuck on the son of a bitch.

From the way he screamed as the the Harlequin lowered the lift over the him just a little more. Eddie got the feeling that Roberts realized she wasn't fucking around, either.

Class, the Comedian thought, the kid's got some real class.

And the fact she was using squeaky clean Mason's place to do the dirty deed, while the old boy was off sucking down some beers over at the Boy Scout's place?

Eddie laughed, again, and lit a fresh cigar.

"Wait! Wait! I'll talk! I'll talk."

"What did he say, Boss?"

"I dunno, kid. That goddamn lift is pretty fuckin' loud. I think he told you to take a walk."

"Did he? That motherfucker!"

"TALK! TALK! I SAID I'LL TALK!"

Liv stopped the lift.

"Okay, fucko. Talk fast. My hands are sweaty. They might slip."

"I can give you Stevens and McCabe! I don't know where the others are. But Stevens and McCabe are hiding out in the South Bronx. In a walk up. On Simpson Street. Three doors down to the left from the 41st Precinct house. Fourth floor up, apartment 405. That's all I know. I swear! I swear."

"You do, huh? Now, was that so fuckin' hard?"

The Harlequin looked at the controls for the lift.

"Boss, what time is it?" she asked Eddie.

He looked at the clock over Mason's desk.

"Midnight."

Liv sighed, regretfully.

"Shame. He'll be back too soon. Oh well. I just gotta better idea. Okay, ya stinkin' rat, let's go take a li'le ride."

Jefferson Roberts looked like his face had been put through a machine, and he was breathing pretty shallowly under some broken ribs.

Thoughtfully, the Comedian and the Harlequin tossed him in the back seat of his car.

After all, his compatriot, Shelia Morris, was trussed up in the trunk.

The Comedian drove across the Brooklyn Bridge, and through the familiar streets until they got to Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick.

The Harlequin climbed into the back, and cut the Church of Humanity terrorist's bonds.

Then, as the Comedian sped past a certain gutter, the Harlequin opened the back door, cut Jefferson Roberts' throat so deeply with her machete that she almost severed his head, and pushed him out of the car.

When he hit the sidewalk, his head popped right off, and rolled into the storm drain.

"That's one for me, baby!" Harlequin yelled.

"Quit squawkin, kid. I'm gonna turn around, so you can give him two in the head."

"You mean his head that rolled into the storm drain when his body hit the fuckin' concrete? I think he's dead, Eddie. I really do."

The Comedian adjusted the rearview mirror.

He saw the body lying on the sidewalk, and the head lying in the gutter as he drove away.

"Jesus, kid, even the _Post_ ain't gonna print a shot of that. Still, you never can be too sure. But, in this case, we'll make an exception."

As they proceeded a few blocks down and a street over, to Putnam Avenue, where Roberts and Morris had been holed up, they both had a good laugh.

The Comedian stopped the car, some piece of shit Jap job, right in front of the building the two terrorists had been holed up in.

He and the Harlequin got out of the car.

"Go wash up, kid. Your costume's more red than it is purple an' yellow. I got this part."

"Okay, Boss."

The Harlequin went into the basement of the condemned building the terrorists had been crouching in, to wash the blood off of her costume.

They weren't going to bother to wash down the back of the terrorists' car, which looked like it had been spray painted with Jeff Roberts' blood.

That was part of the plan.

To let the C of H know that if they were going to act like criminal rats, then they were joing to be treated like them.

The Comedian went and got the woman terrorist out of the trunk, and loaded her into the driver's seat.

She was gagged, and tied hand and foot, and had been in the trunk all night, but she was still alive.

Harlequin was just climbing through the broken basement window.

"You hungry, kid?" the Comedian was saying.

"Yeah." The Harlequin replied.

"Grossmann's?" he asked, as he unholstered one of his guns.

"Sounds good."

The Harlequin disappeared into the basement.

The Comedian didn't say anything to Morris, he didn't call her a baby-burning, mutant-killing, hellbound son of a bitch.

He didn't even tell her what he usually told dirtbags he was about to dispatch; he wasn't going to send a woman who killed other women, and children, and babies in cold blood to the Old Man.

A woman who had bourne witness to rape and participated in torture, who had planned to blow up churches, and firebombed people's houses at night while they slept in them.

Eddie sincerely hoped there was a deeper, darker part of hell reserved for people like her.

He held the .45 auto at arm's length, and fired two shots into Morris' head, splattering bone, blood and brains all over the windshield and interior of her shitty Jap car.

What was left of her head fell onto the steering wheel, which began to honk loudly into the night.

Calmly, the Comedian picked up some newspaper from a garbage can and wiped the blood off his armor, then he wadded it up and tossed it into the car with the dead woman.

It didn't quite work.

He looked at the tiny basement window; there was no way he was getting through that.

"Hey, kid, we ain't doin' a B and E! This is Federal shit, and we're fuckin' superheroes, we can go in through the front door!" The Comedian yelled through the window.

He walked up the steps to the front door of the building and went in.

There were some scared-looking kids sitting around a kerosene heater right in front of the stairs.

Squatters.

Probably a bunch of kids from Iowa or someplace who came to New York to make it in showbiz, or hang out with the hippies, to tune in, turn on, and drop out.

And this is where they ended up.

Jesus Christ, Steve's right, the whole world has gone crazy.

And me, fuck, do I hate being right, sometimes.

The Comedian shined his flashlight on them.

There were eight of them, three boys and five girls, and they looked like the kinds of things they had once taken for granted, like clean clothes, regular meals, and daily baths had been out of the picture for awhile.

They all put up their hands, and the boys hid the girls behind them.

"Don't hurt us. We'll come quietly."

"Yeah, youse don't look like you're up to puttin' up a fight. Relax. I ain't here for you. Those the cellar steps?" The Comedian asked.

One of the kids nodded.

"You kids live here?"

"Yeah." Said the boy who had spoken before.

"You see any weird characters comin' and goin'?"

"Sure. We used to live upstairs, but these two assholes kicked us all out of our own place. They had guns, man. There wasn't much we could do."

"Yeah? Well, they ain't gonna be doin' much, from now on."

The Comedian went into the cellar and found the Harlequin poking through a C of H stockpile.

Weapons, ammunition, rope, gasoline, and the makings for a few serious pipe bombs.

He washed his armor off in the trickle of water coming from the rusty old sink.

"Well, I got no use for all these nails and shit, but they sure got some nice guns. Whole lotta ammo. An' who doesn't need extra gas? I'll split it with you."

"Are you nuts, kid? That's evidence."

"No, it would be evidence if this was a straight fuckin' operation and we were tryna send these fuckers to jail. But seein' as how we're sendin' them all to Hell, and this is undercover, it didn't happen, what C of H cell covert shit, this is some good shit that's gonna go to waste an' Roberts an' What's-Her-Face are too fuckin' dead to use it."

Harlequin fished her key ring out of one of the pockets of the slightly modified boiler suit that was her costume.

"I got my truck parked around the back of Trivelino Mac's. I'll wait."

The Comedian thought over what she said.

It made good sense to him.

He parked his Caddy behind Mac's place, it was safe there, and drove the old green Ford panel truck back to the abandoned building on Putnam Avenue, and they loaded up everything they wanted from the stockpile.

Out on the street, the Comedian used the police call box to notify the cleaning crew about the rest of the stuff.

"…leave the car out front with the body in in, untouched. I want that found. And there's a bunch of squatters livin' in this dump. Buncha kids. Hippies or runaways or somethin'. Give'm the clothes and the money and tell them to get the fuck out or they're goin' to jail…what…no, just tell 'em that, it ain't a crime ta be poor an' hungry, I just want 'em outa there in case some more C of H cocksuckers show up and decided to kill everybody…oh yeah, I care if a buncha fuckin' raggedy-ass kids got a bag of week or a coupla caps of street skag cut with baking soda and strychnine, that's a big fuckin' score…just do what I tellya, alright….gimme about ten minutes to get outa the vicinity."

The Comedian hung up the phone.

"Kid, you're the one they trust. They're scared shitless of me. Go in there an' tell those people they're movin' out."

Harlequin got out of the truck and went into the building.

When the squatters, all of whom were now gathered in front of the door, with they're meagre belongings saw her, they visibly relaxed.

"It's her. It's the Harlequin." One of the girls said.

"Yeah, man. In the flesh. So, dig, here's the trip. Some dudes in black coveralls are gonna show up, an give you some of this shit that some badguys had stashed downstairs. Money, an' clothes, an' some canned food. They're not gonna give you a hassle, or search you, they're just gonna give you the stuff an' tell you to get the fuck out. Just listen to them, and leave. Forget you ever saw them. Or this place."

"Well, gettin' some money, an' some food, an' some clothes, we ain't gonna bum rap that. But, like, where the fuck are we gonna go, now? Can you help us?" one of the guys replied.

"Sure I can, man. That's my job. The building at the end of the block, it's empty. Nobody's in it. You cats go there. Me, I'm gonna find youse guys a better place to crash. I know lotsa people who ain't narcs or cops that can help. I'll be back on Friday. If anybody comes and hassles you, like the pigs or anybody, you tell them the Harlequin's taking care of you, and they'll lay off. I'll see youse later. Alright?"

"Yeah. Sure. Hey, thanks, man. We heard you was alright."

"That's because I am."

"Was it your idea? Givin' us the money an' the clothes."

"No. It was the Comedian's."

"See? I told you guys. He's not like some of those other dudes. He's for everybody. Like Captain America." The girl who had spoken up said.

"Yeah, well, guys like him don't like hippies."

"He don't think of people that way. As Hippies, or Doves, or Hawks or Squares or whatever. He sees two kinds of people. Badguys and Goodguys. Now if you're a hippie, and you're doin' somethin' he thinks is a badguy thing, you'll catch the shit, but if there's some plastic fantastic motherfucker standing right beside you, doing the same thing, he'll catch it, too. An' like he just told me. Ain't no crime bein' hungry and poor an' scared. Hey, I gotta go. It's quittin' time. Stay freaky, brothers and sisters. I'll catch you real soon." The Hralequin told them.

Having set up some less violent work, Harlequin went back to her truck, and found that the Comedian wouldn't yield the driver's seat.

"Goddamit, Eddie, it's my truck!"

"So? I'm in charge, here."

"Bullshit! It's my truck, and we're gonna stash this shit with my father, so I should get to drive! Move the fuck over!"

"Why don't you make me, kid?"

"You think you're funny, dontcha, Eddie? I'll bet you think that I won't fuckin' punch you, but ya know somethin'? Try me!"

Eddie laughed, a little.

"Okay, okay, settle the fuck down. You can drive to Jack's, but I'm drivin' back to Mac's. Agreed?"

"That's better."

Of course, they were no sooner in the garage that was the first layer of the Joker's bunker than did he show up to supervise.

"Alright, boys, I want all of these boxes there, in the far corner, and the tarp over them. Anybody who lifts the tarp, or looks in one box, dies. As in dead." he asked, as he straightened his dressing gown over his pyjamas.

While his goons unloaded the truck, the Joker invited his daughter and his old friend downstairs for a cup of coffee, which he already had Harley Quinn preparing.

He sent her back to bed before the three of them sat down.

"And what is it that I'm stashing for you?"

"C of H stuff."

The Joker laughed.

"You know what that is , Eddie? A stroke of genius. Use their own weapons against them, so that if Gotham's finest do get involved, it looks like an inside job."

"Were you thinking of that, kid?" The Comedian asked.

"No. I wasn't. But, you know what, Daddy? That's a great idea. We should do that, Eddie. You never know with this deep cover shit. When you get so deep that you haven't officially done what you did, then well, better safe than sorry." The Harlequin opined.

They finished their coffee, and headed, in the truck, over to Grossmann's.

Eddie was still driving.

Liv had gotten so enthralled with her father's idea, and was so busy making plans in her Boeing 747 jet engine mind that she forgot to insist that she drive.

"That's two more down, Eddie, and ten to go." She finally said.

"An' we got a line on two more. What's today, Tuesday? Alright. We'll let those two in the Bronx think the heat's offa them, and then we'll pay a call on them on Friday night."

"Sounds like a plan, Eddie."

The Harlequin turned on the radio and started flipping through stations, until she found one that was playing the Rolling Stones.

It was _Jumpin' Jack Flash_.

"This okay with you, Eddie?"

"Yeah, I'm alright with the Stones. An' the Who. It's those fuckin' Beatles I can't stand. Alla that sunny happy Pollyanna crap. Jesus Christ."

"That's just the shit they play on the radio. Their albums have some really good shit on them."

"Yeah. Like that fuckin' song about McCartney's dog. And that bullshit Bungalow Bill. That was great. You shouldn't put that fuckin' record in the same room with Muddy Waters an' John Lee Hooker an' Chuck Berry an' the Who an' the Stones, kid."

"It ain't your record, Eddie, whadda you care?"

"I'll tell youse what I care. Every time I come over your place, anymore, I gotta listen to it. You must be fuckin' drivin' your brother crazy. If I was Grayson, I'd throw that fuckin' record out the window. White Album. They shoulda called it the Shite Album."

Eddie parked behind Grossmann's, in one of the reserved spots that Sophie always let him park in, and he and Liv walked around to the front.

"Okay, so I won't play it when you're around. Jesus, who died and made you fuckin' Wolfman Jack? Shit. It's too bad we couldn't have lowered the lift on him, huh? But we would never have got the place cleaned by the time Hollis came back, not even with a S.H.I.E.L.D. crew."

Eddie held the door open for Liv, laughing and shaking his head.

"That sounds like Crazy Jack, talkin'. Sometimes kid, I think the apple fell a little too close to the tree with you."

"Likewise, Eddie, I'm sure."

**II: Bruce**

Clark Kent was one of Bruce Wayne's closest associates, also one of his closest friends, but, rather like Hollis Mason, he really was the All American Boy.

Steve Rogers had been, and always would be a soldier, so he was a little earthier and saltier than Clark or Hollis.

A man could relax a little more in Steve's company.

True, he was a very honest, forthright, straightforward man, but there were little currents under the surface.

Things he had done, things he had seen that he quietly lived with.

Clark was nothing like that.

He was a very uncomplicated man, and no matter what, you always knew where you stood with him, which was a good thing, even though, sometimes, Bruce had to watch what he said around his friend and colleague.

One way he knew that something was bothering Clark was when he got the "Batman, this is Superman" call.

On Tuesday morning, one reputed C of H terrorist was found with her brains and her blown out skull all over the inside of a car, sitting outside the condemned building in Bushwick that was reputedly one of their meeting places.

Another was found on the same street in the same gutter where the Harlequin was dumped and left to die with his battered body on the sidewalk and his head, which had a smashed eye socket and a broken nose, was lying in the storm drain.

There was an expression of unpleasant surprise on the head's face.

On Thursday morning, through the Harlequin, the JLA's SuperFriends In Need charity provided a group of two boys and three girls with a two bedroom house in Sunnyside, Queens, and put them in touch with a social worker, a welfare case worker, and paid for three bus tickets home for their friends.

Trivelino got one of the girls, who was pregnant, in touch with Dr. Levitt at the Free Clinic in Bushwick, who made appointments to see and treat all of the displaced hippies. She found a job for another of them at a coffee shop in the Village she frequented, and got one of the boys work for the Sanitation Department, and got Paulie Blake and his father, Ivan Stavrogin, the contract through the JLA charity to paint the house.

On Thursday evening the telephone call came over the secure line in the Batcave.

"Batman? This is Superman. We have to talk. I'm at the Hall, now."

"I'm on my way."

Clark was sitting alone in his usual seat at the table in the main room at the Hall of Justice.

He had been looking at the same photographs that Bruce had seen that morning.

"Clark, before you get too upset, although I can't say so for sure, I have some very convincing intelligence that this campaign against the C of H is a Top Secret deep cover covert operation of S.H.I.E.L.D., and that Trivelino is acting under orders and in her official capacity as an agent."

"I see. And that makes it alright for her to run around in the streets with that lunatic Eddie Blake and hunt down and execute people like dirty dogs in the gutter?"

A moral issue.

Bruce sighed.

"You do know what these people do, don't you, Clark?"

"Of course I do. I think what they do is, well, disgusting and evil and reprehensible don't begin to describe it. And I know what they did to Trivelino's mother, right in front of her. But I still don't think that this is justice. I don't think what you and the Comedian did in 1954 was justice, either. Street justice is just a fancy term for vigilante violence. Now, I don't expect the Comedian to understand that what he's doing is wrong. The man is more than half a psychopath, and he may be on our side, and I'm told he has a good side, and I suppose he does, or else he'd be on the other side of the cape, but he's a grown man. He's not going to change. But I'm surprised you're letting Trivelino go the same way. I'm no admirer of your arch-enemy, but he gave you his daughter in the hope that you could raise her to be something better than what he was. This is not a step in this direction. You shouldn't let her run with Eddie Blake."

Bruce Wayne shisfted uncomfortably in his cahir.

He had said the same speech to himself.

Many times.

"That's easy for you to say, Clark. You don't have any children. I have two. There's only nine months between them, too. And they're very close, like they were brother and sister by blood. They lived in the same bedroom until Trivelino was 16. Now, they both live in the servant's quarters, but Dick's room is right across the hall from Liv's. Growing up, they had the same friends, they went to the same schools, they read the same comics, watched the same movies, and played with the same toys. But they turned out completely differently. Dick has never given me a day of trouble. He listens. Liv gives me nothing but trouble. You see this grey in my hair? It's from her. She drinks, she drives too fast, she stays out too late, she fights, and she runs around with men, with goddamn near anybody. And she doesn't listen. But she tries to be good. She really does. You're the Man of Steel, Clark, and you don't do the work she does. Liv's a beautiful girl. And she's smart. She's kind, and generous, and funny, and she was a warm disposition and a good heart. But she's wild and she doesn't listen to me. But she does listen to Eddie Blake. And he may be a lot of things, but he's a grown man who's respected in his profession who leads a life that's orderly and stable compared to the mess that's Liv's life. And he treats her with dignity and respect. When I know she's with him, I can sleep at night as well as when I know she's with me. That means a lot to me, Clark. More than you can know, until you and Lois marry and you have a child of your own." Bruce explained.

He could tell by the look on Clark's face that he was really thinking about what Bruce had to say.

"Can you tell me this, Bruce? How does a man blow a woman's head to bits, in cold blood, and then show kindness to a bunch of homeless kids, and make sure they get a cache of food and money? How does a woman who can slash a man's throat so deeply his head comes off like the top of a jar turn around and save those kids' lives?"

"Things aren't always so back and white as you'd like them to be, Clark. Look at Tony. He's a brilliant man. I've known him since he was a teenage prodigy grad student at MIT and I was in my twenties and the youngest professor on the faculty. He's got money, he's the CEO of a billion-dollar Fortune 500 company, and he's better looking that both of us put together. He's funny, he's charming as an old-time matinee idol, women love him, and his reaction to something that would have devastated ordinary mortals like you and I was to invent a self-sustaining battery in accordance with some of Tesla's theoretical principles, them invent a battle suit, then become a superhero, form a team, snag Captain America, and commence saving the world. And he's a pathetic, lonely drunk. Besides me and Steve, and his teammates, the only real friends he has in the world are his secretary and his butler. He lives alone in a series of palaces, and when he's not in the suit or working, he passes from place to place and party to party and woman to woman in an alcoholic twilight. I worry about him dying facedown in a pool of his own vomit as much as I worry about Liv meeting the same fate. It's a crazy world, Clark. And the people who are crazy enough to try and keep it safe are the craziest of all."

"Maybe you're right, Bruce. Do you think there's anything we can do for either of them?"

"Liv and Tony? For now, we can try very hard to keep them from realising they have so much in common, and hope for the best."

"I think I'll bring her in, now."

Clark pushed the intercom button on his chair.

"Alright, Liv, you can come in now."

Liv came into the room with her head held high, but Bruce could tell she was nervous.

"Are you kicking me out?" she asked, as she sat down.

"We are not kicking you out." Bruce assured her.

"I never said that." Clark replied.

"I did." Bruce reiterated.

"It's okay. I could always try and join the Avengers." Liv joked.

"Liv, do you believe in God? Does your boss, The Comedian?"

"What?' Bruce blurted out.

"Well, yeah. We're both Irish Catholics." Liv replied.

"I'm serious." Clark demanded.

"So am I. Eddie believes in God. He does. He usedta take his brothers and sisters to Church every Sunday. He goes to church on Christmas, and Easter, and on the anniversaries of when his parents an' his brothers and sisters who passed away, died, and once a year, on Good Friday, he goes to confession and scares the hell out of some poor priest. He still thinks he's going to Hell, but that's alright with Eddie. That's where his father is, and he figures, if his Pop is there, he can take it."

"What about you?"

"Well, I'm a scientist and a materialist, Clark. I'm a deist, but I do believe in the existence of God. Until I'm in deep shit. Then I'm an Irish Catholic, again."

That seemed to make Superman feel a little better.

"Liv, I know that you are an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that, as such, there are things you can't divulge to me. I know you have your orders and that it's your duty to carry them out. But let me ask you this. Is this justice? And, more importantly, is this the right thing to do?"

Liv thought about it.

"Well, Mr. Kent, I'm sure I could dust off that old wheeze about how you think that things should be a certain way, and it would be nice if they were, but they aren't, but I'm sure you hear that one all the time out of people who are trying to slide horrendous bullshit by you, so I'll skip the rationalisations. Is this justice? That one's easy. You betcha. If you want me to, I can show you the evidence that these two people were, among other heinous crimes, murderers, several times over. There would have been more than enough proof to get them convicted, and sentenced to death in any court in America. But, my orders were not to bring these people to the courts. The US government, in its wisdom, has decided that they want to take a different route towards giving the C of H their justice. Different process, same result. Now, as to whether or not what I did was the right thing to do, well, that's not quite so cut and dried. Do you mind if I smoke? I mean, there is an ashtray on the table."

"Go ahead." Superman told her.

"I really don't know if it's right, Mr. Kent. It's the closest I've ever come to killing in cold blood. Anyone else I ever killed, it was in, yunno, a combat situation. Me or them. Sure, you still feel bad about it, but, if it's you or them, what can you do? Now, if these were just people, even ordinary criminals, I could never do it. I may be a killer, but I'm not a murderer. But these people, they're hardly human. They're like rats. Rapists, murderers, torturers, terrorists. It's my job to keep people like this off the streets, and the only thing these C of H, ummm, lowlives understand is violence. You have to be more ruthless than they are to scare them off, to let them know that what they do don't fly, here. Sure, it's personal. They're after me because my father's a freak of nature and my mother was a witch, and they could go after my whole family. I mean, Mr. Kent, they kidnapped me and they tortured me, and when I say torture I mean torture. It was real bad."

Liv stopped talking and lit another cigarette.

"Bad…very…bad…"

Her voice broke a little.

Clark and Bruce thought the same thing at the same time.

"Trivelino, did those men…molest you?" Superman asked.

Liv lit another cigarette.

"I think maybe you better call Cap and Eddie. Because if I'm going to explain this, I'm only going to do it, once."

* * *

Liv had burned her way through a few more cigarettes by the time the Comedian and Captain America arrived at the Hall of Justice.

"Uhh, well, I'm here because Mr. Kent wants an explanation. So I might as well do the right thing, and explain it all. With the understanding this don't leave this room."

No one disagreed, so Liv lit another cigarette and started to talk.

"Ah, yeah, this is my official report about the occasion of my kidnapping. I was abducted from the corner of Fulton and Rockaway at approximately 4:30 PM, shortly after leaving my grandparents' home. The car was a black '59 Plymouth sedan. One of the terrorists shot me with a tranquilizer gun as I was walking. When I came to, I was in the top floor apartment of what looked to be a condemned building. I was completely naked, my wrists and ankles were bound, and I was on the floor. They used a rope to hoist me up to the ceiling, and left me hang there for a long time. One of the men, later identified as Jefferson Roberts, dropped me down a little, and he worked me over pretty good. Beat me up, I mean. They asked me questions about my mother and my father, but also about S.H.I.E.L.D and JLA and, like I would know, Avengers operations against the C of H. I said nothing. So, they made with the _strappado_, and hoisted me up again. _Strappado_ is an old torture device the Spanish Inquisition used to use. They tied your hands behind your back and them hoisted you in there air, but what the C of H did to me, I figure that's close enough. Roberts then beat me with a rubber hose, and threw several buckets of ice cold water on me. I continued to refuse to answer the questions, and they hoisted me back up to the ceiling, again. I think I was unconscious for a great length of time, and then I was lowered and Roberts threw another bucket of water on me. Another man came and hooked up some clamps to a car battery on one end, and to my tits, erm, breasts, and the other and they started giving me electric shocks. Every time I went to pass out from the pain, they'd throw more water on me an' wake me up. Cold water, too. Ice cold. Either that, or one of them would put out his cigarette on me. In real painful places. Like on my thighs. On the insides. They threatened to burn me, to brand an M into my face with a hot coat hanger. They had it twisted up like an M, but they couldn't get it heated up enough with their lighters."

Liv drank from a glass of water in front of her.

"To answer your previous question, Mr. Kent, these C of H types are are not supposed to screw mutants. If the top guys catch them doing it, they cut the men's balls off, and the women, they cut off their labia and their clit and sew them up so all they can do is pee or bleed. But, some of these guys, they figured, well, the boss isn't around so we'll have a little fun. I know that's what they had in mind when they took me down, because that's what they were saying. I pretended to be knocked out, and when the one guy untied my legs, I got his head under my knee, and I really don't know how I did it, but I either choked him so hard he died or banged his head off the floor so many times he died, but, either way, he was dead. I took the knife from his hand. The other three guys were so shocked they just stood there, which gave me time to stick the knife in this one guy's throat. The third guy ran, and this last guy, he was standing there with his pants around his ankles, and he got so scared, he pissed all down his leg. Which was only fair, because I was pretty scared, too. I didn't know if I had the strength left to fight these guys off, I was really, really, really afraid they were going to gang me every which way and then kill me. I killed the pissing himself guy, and I broke out of the room with the knife and made a run for it, but, while I was in the hallway, I passed out."

Liv lit yet another cigarette.

"I think I was lying there in the hallway a long time, and the next thing I knew John Stryker was there. He had my uniform and he put it on me, and handed me off to Roberts and that woman, I forget her name, the one Eddie just shot. They put me in the car, Roberts car, the one he went for his last ride in, and Roberts slit my throat and threw me in the gutter to die. Same gutter I threw him into. I don't know why I didn't. Die, I mean. I think it was the force of my will. The worst part, though, if you want to know the truth, was when I thought those guys were going to rape me. The whole torture thing, it hurt, and it was disturbing, but I've been hurt worse and disturbed more. I still think about it, and it still bothers me. I'm jumpy. Some guy walks behind me on the street, I get this urge to attack him. I keep thinking about what it was like for women who couldn't fight them off or get away. I keep thinking about if it would have killed me, having all four of them, yunno, screwing me every which way, in ever hole but the ones in my nose and my ears. I've been having this nightmare where it happens, and they're laughing at me, and I'm lying on the ground, and there's blood pouring out of me, yunno, from everywhere, and I'm dying. And they're pulling their pants up and laughing. All four of them are dead. Roberts was the last. I haven't had that dream since I killed him, so I hope it's gone now. I do feel a little better, now that I killed them all. But, still. Yunno?"

Liv paused, and ran her hand through her hair.

"I really don't know. I mean I could say I'm just following orders, but that's what the Nazis said. I think it's right for them to be off the street. I don't know if it's right for me to kill them. I just know it's my job. And yeah, it is justice." She finished

"I can't argue with that, Clark. I think Trivelino is doing the right thing, and for the right reasons, not just personal vengeance. With all due respect, you don't do the kind of work Trivelino, and I, and Eddie Blake do. I respect your reasons for not doing it. But that doesn't mean that somebody doesn't have to." Bruce interjected.

Clark still looked upset.

"Liv, I know this is your personal business, so you don't have to answer. I'm not asking you this as Superman, your superior. I'm asking you this as Clark Kent, your stepfather's good friend, who's known you since you were a little girl. Does Director Blake treat you fairly? Because, if there's something funny going on, you don't have to be afraid of him. I certainly am not. I can protect you from him. He may be many things, but he's not made of Kryptonite."

The Comedian leapt to his feet.

"Hey, wait a fuckin' second, Kent…"

"Eddie, sit down." Cap told him.

"Don't gimme that shit, Steve!"

"Goddamnit, soldier, I told you to sit down!"

Slowly, giving Superman a dirty look, the Comedian sat down.

"I know you can't see it, Mr. Kent, but Mr. Blake, he really is a good guy. I've known him all my life, and he was friends with my Ma, and my Daddy. He takes me seriously as a mask, and he's been tryin' to look after me. Which is no mean feat. He saved my life, and there's blood between us. You don't hafta worry about that. I dunno about the rest of the world, but when it comes to me, Mr. Blake is as good as gold." Liv declared.

"One more question, Trivelino. How can you do such violent acts on one hand, and show such compassion on the other?"

"I'm glad you asked me that, Mr. Kent. Look at my hands. At my tattoos. My right hand, it's the hand of Hell, like it says on my knuckles. And like the skull and crossbones warn, I give no quarter and ask none. The Hand of Hell deals death. But, then there's my left hand. It's the hand of Fire. Fire is the crucible of life. And Fire is the great equaliser. It burns wounds clean, and devours everything in its path. Fire burns everything clean. Nothing can pass unscathed through fire. Not the grossest of evils. And in the palm? That's the Third Eye. The All-Seeing Eye. Justice isn't really blind. She sees. With the Third Eye, she sees everything. She sees the past and the future and the point in the universe where they both meet. I look at my hands, and I remember that I'm made of Hellfire. But, before I use the hand of Hell, to deal the Death the skull and crossbones warn of, I open my hand of fire and remember what the Third Eye sees. My right hand deals death, but my left hand tempers its wrath and reminds me of what is just. I never let one take over for the other. You see, Mr. Kent, eventually, fire can burn even hell and death to ashes and soot. Fire is stronger than Hell. Justice it greater than vengeance. It's all here, right on my hands. So I can't forget. So I'll never forget. Do you understand?"

Superman gave the Harlequin a quizzical look, and then smiled, warmly, and took both her hard, tattooed little hands in his.

"Yes, Trivelino, now I understand. I am definitely not kicking you out. I wish every superhero in New York understood our life as well as you do. If I thought it would help, I'd make them all get their hands tattooed. Now, will you forgive me for giving you a little old-fashioned advice from an old-fashioned square?"

"Of course."

"You know, I can't say I'm a hundred percent against you kids, and this peace and love thing. As a matter of fact, I think this crazy world can use all the peace and love it can get. And although I can't understand the whole free love thing, I can see where you're all coming from. It's a nice idea, in a way. For every boy to be kind to every girl, like every girl was his wife, like everyone was part of a big, happy family, and every house could be your home. But I do know this. There's no love in a mean drunk's heart at closing time in a bar. And there's less love in the heart of some desperate fan who just wants to touch a little bit of your superhero glory. Maybe this free love thing gives people something back, but what you do, Trivelino, all that does is take something away from you. Every time. There's a reason why us old folks looked down on promiscuity. Because of what it could do to a person. To a woman. Men have a way of breaking a woman down, with their meanness and their cruelty and callouness. And whether you end up in the bottom of a bottle because you're a victim of theirs, or because you've become as mean, and hard and cruel as them, you've still ended up in the same place. Nowhere. I want you to think about that. Alright, Trivelino?"

Trivelino gave Clark an infinitely sad look.

"See, kid? Maybe you'll listen to Superman, huh? Look, Kent, I ain't the bad guy, here. I try and tell her that alla time. I worry about you, kid. An' not just about your soul. There's badder motherfckers than you in this city, and if you run afoul of one of them, you might just end up dead." The Comedian added.

Liv shrugged.

"If I die, I die." She said.

The Comedian threw his hands up in the iar,

"There she goes, Bruce!"

"You see, Clark? This is what we have to put up with. Look at the Comedian. He's getting grey in his hair, too, and he's only had her working for him for a few months." Batman interjected.

"Trivelino, it is not too late for you. If you don't mind, Comedian, maybe you could take Trivelino home."

"That's a good idea. C'mon, kid. Let's go see your Daddy. I think ya might need ta go alla way home, tonight."

* * *

With a somewhat lighter heart, Superman dismissed the Harlequin.

"Bruce, I begin to see what you mean. Do you have a plan?"

"Of course I do. I'm hoping that if he gets attached enough to her, I can convince him to make her his apprentice."

"That would work. Do you think he has strong feelings for her?"

Bruce laughed, sharply.

So did Cap.

"Clark, if I hadn't pulled rank on him, he would have been at your throat. Not that it would have hurt you, but, I'd call those strong feelings."

"Strong feelings? I think the old sinner is just as crazy about Liv as she is about him. The trick is getting them both to admit to it. To each other. At the same time. Until then, well, at least I'm not alone in this, anymore."

"I'll help you, Bruce. Whenever you need it. It's like our pastor back in Smallville used to say. God rejoices more in black sheep more than the little white lambs. Because it's so much harder to save them."

"Amen to that." Cap replied.

It had been a long time since Bruce Wayne thought about God in such a personal way.

"I hope you're right, Clark. Because my Trivelino is the blackest of black sheep. Her ragged little heart of gold is black as midnight in a coal mine."

That was all Bruce Wayne had to say on the subject.

He changed it, quickly, and he and Clark and Captain America started talking about the usual business.

To do otherwise would have been too painful.

**New York City, Comedian's Apartment, a few months later.**

**III: Eddie**

The Comedian returned to his apartment later than usual that night, in a really lousy mood.

He had gotten too pissed off at some punk, it was the Boy Scout's fault, and he'd hit the punk asshole the wrong way because he was mad, and now his hand hurt like Hell.

He went and changed out of his costume, and put his bathrobe on over his shorts.

Eddie got a beer out of the fridge and an icebag out of the freezer, and sat down at his kitchen table.

Something made him think of the kid.

Since they were probably three or four years old, Eddie Blake had spent his Thursday nights taking his nephews, Paulie and Pat, and Paulie's two best friends, Laurie and Liv to the big drive-in over the bridge in Jersey.

Laurie started to complain she was too old for it when she was about 13, but they didn't quit going for another year.

He quit, however, letting Liv sit in the front seat with him after she was 13, because, one night, she rested her hard, recently tattooed little hand on his leg, and then started feeling around the fly of his pants with a lot more familiarity than you'd think a girl who was 13 would have.

Of course, he'd started younger than that, but still.

When she was 13, the idea of Crazy Jack's daughter, no, more than that, Merrie's daughter, feeling him up at the movies was fairly close to horrifying.

He steered as clear of her as he could, considering she was Paulie's best friend and always at the house in Bensonhurst, until that night when he burned up Ozzy's big ideas at the Watchmen meeting, and she showed up, in costume.

She was three months past her 16th birthday, three months into her mask career, and she was all grown up.

She looked good with guns on.

As the idea of putting his hands on her didn't seem so disastrous, anymore, Eddie quit giving the kid the cold shoulder and found out she had grown up to be just as crazy and just as smart as her father, but Eddie didn't see her the way most people did, as some crazy, drunken Brooklyn Irish thug of a whore and a killer.

She was a pretty, spunky little Irish girl with a thousand watt smile, smart as hell and a damn good mask. Sure she was a little rough, but she was a mask who grew up first with the Joker, then in Brooklyn, in hiding half her life, and worked the mean streets.

She wasn't a fucking beauty queen, was she, and besides, Eddie couldn't stand those weak-willed, delicate kind of broads, the kind that always wanted you to marry them and not swear so much and you had to move their furniture if you wanted to get laid; they were usually a big pain in the ass.

And Liv was a good girl. She tried so hard to be good, in spite of the bad in her, and because she'd inherited Merrie Damiano's lion's heart of gold.

She was his nephew's best friend, and his daughter's best friend, and the child of two of the only people he'd ever called friends. That was reason enough that Eddie didn't like the shit some people said about her, and some of them walked away with their big mouths bloody.

But, still, he was wary, because she was crazy.

Crazy and wild and full of trouble.

She reminded him of himself when he was her age, full of piss, wind and excitement, mean and horny and cocky, and she gave off trouble like a H-bomb gave off radiation, so he tried to keep his distance.

Yeah.

Rushing to the hospital and donating a pint of blood to save her life is keeping your distance, Eddie?

I promised Jack.

I promised the Bat.

I owe it to Merrie, God rest her soul, like my Ma used to say.

Tried to keep his distance until that night a couple months ago when he was dumb enough to go have a few beers with the kid, and let himself get drunk enough that he fell for the old, "Walk me to my room, I'm too drunk, bit."

He smiled to himself, remembering how she slammed him against the door, unzipped his iron codpiece, threw it on the ground and went down like the Titanic, trying to pin him against the door in case he wanted to get away.

Not fuckin' likely.

Don't blame it all on her, Eddie. Maybe she was 13 when she decided she wanted a piece of you, but that night of her first Watchmen meeting when she bumped into him with her tits before she sat down, and the way she conducted herself at that meeting, that's when you decided you wanted a piece of her.

Tattoos, scars and all.

They look good on her, and none of them are on her face, after all.

And when she came around on Thursdays, she was some of the time happy, and some of the time blue, but some of the time, she was low.

Real low.

She'd curse at him and swing when he wouldn't let her have another beer, and start to tell him about being alone in the street, and call herself those lousy things, a shanty Irish drunk and a killer and a whore, and say how she didn't know why she did some of the crazy things she did but she couldn't stop, and tell him that Thursday was one of the brightest spots in her life.

Him.

Eddie Blake, The Comedian.

He was the big ray of fucking sunshine in the kid's life?

And he'd get to thinking of her, on one of those nights when she was low, or if she was beat up, or drunker than usual, stumbling around in the street, or trying to drive back to Long Island to find a friendly place to flop where somebody gave a damn about her, and it bothered him.

He'd given her his blood to save her life and she swore an oath on him.

Whatever you have done, I have done. Wherever you have been, I have been. And wherever you go, I will follow.

Can't get out of an oath like that.

Not from a witch, whose mother was a witch, who's grandmother was a witch, both of who you owe your life to.

Just tell yourself that, Eddie.

Say it's fate, it'll go easier on you.

So, would it kill him to give her an extra key?

He told her that if she needed a place to flop she could let herself in, even if he wasn't there or had a broad in the bedroom, she could take a shower, eat something, and crash on the couch.

The kid really seemed to appreciate that.

Then, Eddie heard heavy boots scuffling outside his door, and the sound of the key jabbing against the lock, and them the lock clicked and in came the kid.

She looked like she'd had a rough night.

She had an old black eye and some dirty tape around two bashed fingers, and a nice fresh bloody nose, not swelled up, but crusted with brown around the nostrils.

Her undershirt which was soaked with sweat, was torn, and there was blood all over it, and dried blood on her chest covering up some of her tattoos, and she had flecks of blood on her jeans and her boots, both of which were filthy with half-dried mud.

She smelled like blood, sweat, beer and cigarette smoke, and she looked damn glad to be off the hot, dirty streets and into a familiar place to flop with lots of air conditioning.

"Hiya, Eddie. It's not as bad as it looks. This ain't my blood. Can I take a shower?"

The kid was a little drunk, but she was always a little drunk; the point was that's he wasn't falling over.

"Go ahead. Who's blood is it?"

"Awwww, it was work. Nothin' special. The usual bullshit. I don't wanna talk about it."

She went into the shower.

While she was in the shower, Eddie went into the kitchen and turned the burner on, and made some fast bacon and eggs.

He was hungry, anyway.

Of course, it wasn't all selflessness, on Eddie's part.

His hand wasn't the only thing that hurt; he'd had this heaviness in his balls all day; it was this weather, it made him angry and horny in equal parts, and when he was a young man he always got into trouble, nights like this.

And something a lot of guys didn't know about the kid, she cleaned up good.

Under her 'Nam vet, grease monkey, barroom thug clothes, there was a helluva lot of woman, and who the fuck cared if she wore men's military undershirts the way her tits were almost falling out of them, and if she liked to keep her hot little teenage snatch in a pair of OD boxers, it didn't make it any less hot.

In fact, Liv Napier was one of the hottest broads Eddie ever had, and he'd had a lot of women.

But a lot of women didn't have red hair because the Devil had made them in the deepest pits out of the hottest hellfire, and that was where the kid came from.

He reached for the phone while he was cooking, and dialled up somebody he was sure the kid had forgot.

"Batman, here."

"We clear on this line?"

"Yes, Eddie. Go ahead."

"She's here with me. Just showed up about fifteen minutes ago."

"Is she alright?"

"She's got a bloody nose, and she's feelin' low an' drunk an' lonely. I'm gonna get some food in her an' make sure she gets a good night's sleep an' no more booze."

"On a Tuesday?"

"Awww, fuck, it's always Thursday, someplace. But don't get any ideas."

The Bat had a scheme that he wanted to farm the kid out to Eddie; make her like his apprentice. He didn't mind keeping an eye out for her, and he liked having her around on Thursdays, but becoming responsible for her, almost com-fucking-pletely?

No fucking way.

That was too much trouble for any man.

"Well, at least I can rest easily, tonight."

"Yeah. I gotta go. I'm cookin'. Seeya."

"Sooner than you think."

The Bat hung up.

Typical Bat.

Cryptic and blunt.

The kid came out just as he was taking the pan off of the stove, in a clean undershirt and boxers, with the waistband folded haphazardly so it was under her belly button.

"Yunno, kid, I seen more guys in regulation underwear, bein a Marine on active duty off an' on since the Big One, an' I never thought I'd meet a woman that would make 'em look good."

"Yeah, Eddie? Really?"

"Kid, I got no reason to lie to ya."

"Thanks, Eddie. I don't get a lotta complements from the guys I meet. How come there's some of my clean clothes under the sink in your bathroom?"

"You left 'em here, dirty. Edie washed 'em along with mine. Besides, you oughta leave a change of clothes here. Just in case."

"I usually do that, in places where I flop. But I didn't wanna impose."

"What, an undershirt and shorts, a pair of Levis, a tee shirt and one of your flannels or your Uncle Mac's old army shirts is imposin'? Don't worry about it, kid. There's blood between us, remember? Now, eat your food."

She probably hadn't eaten all day, either, because she shovelled the food in.

"Boy, this is good stuff. You always make the best fuckin' bacon an' eggs. So, how was your night's work, Eddie? Ya look kinda tired an' pissed off at the same time. What happened to your hand?"

"I fucked it up. The whole night, it fuckin' blew. That's how the fuck it was. I went out on a fuckin' wild goose chase with Danny Boy an' the Inkblot. Danny Boy wanted to gather some information. With no snitch. So we're in this joint, trying to get some lowlife ta sing, and Danny Boy's actin' like he's a fuckin' Philadelphia lawyer. I thought he was gonna pull a fuckin' copy of the Constution outa his pocket an' start readin' from it. Holy shit! Well, at least that crazy fuck Rorschach has somethin' on the ball, because he distracted the Boy Scout, an' I took the lowlife out and worked him over a little. He talked. Real bullshit, but I got pissed off and gave the punk the beating I wanted to give the Boy Scout, an' I hurt my hand. Hardly worth suitin' up."

That was another good thing about the kid, you could talk to her like that, plainly, without her getting all upset about it.

"Aw gee, Eddie, that's too bad."

The kid took her medical kit out of her knapsack, and brought her chair over next to Eddie's.

Eddie held his hand out to her; she was Merrie's kid and had learned the ropes well from Magdelene and from Merrie's book; he trusted her more than some doctor.

"Your ring finger's broken in two places, an' the knuckle's busted on your middle finger. Cut, too. So, I'm gonna splint the ring finger, an tape the middle finger to it. But foist, I gotta clean up your knuckle, an' bandage it. That oughta fix youse up. That OK?"

"Sure, kid. I trust your work."

Now Magdelene, she never talked to you while she was fixing you up, but the kid talked to you, to keep your mind off it, like Merrie had.

"So, you know that Joe's number is up. An' Pat's."

"I know that, kid."

"I guess your number's up, too."

Eddie sighed, hevily.

What was going to become of her, without him?

"Yeah, kid. It is. I've known since the Tet Offensive earlier this year, if that didn't work out then ol' Bull Johnson was gonna call me in. Well, it ain't. We're fuckin' stuck inna mud over there in 'Nam. Literally. But don't you worry about Joe Mac and Pat. I got 'em comin' in with me, as non-combat personnel."

"What about me, Eddie?"

"What about you, kid? I know how you feel about the war. Me, I ain't got the luxury of havin' an opinion. It's my fuckin' job."

She finished with his hand.

"Goddamn you, Eddie, you can't just fuckin' leave, right fuckin' now! What about the C of H mission?"

"They been here since 1950, kid. They'll be here when I get back. What did you think I was gonna do? Go to Canada?"

"Well, what the fuck do you expect me to do?"

"I'm glad youse asked me that. I expect you to close your legs, put down the bottle and get your ass in fighting shape. When you got that together, I expect you to report to Director Fury and tell him you're all ready for Major Victor Creed's Basic Training program. Then, I expect youse to pass that, an' after that, well, I'll just be expecting youse." Eddie replied.

"WHAT?"

"Look, kid, ya know what I was before the Big One? I was some punk kid in a yellow boiler suit who was gonna die out on the street any day, or end up becomin' like the lowlives I was fightin'. Ya know what made my fortune and straightened me out? War. Some people ain't right for a war, and those people should stay home, or stay behind the lines, in your non-com positions. But you ain't one of 'em, kid. You been breakin' your ass to prove yourself in this jungle with nobody at your back, and you got next ta no credit for it. But, if you go off ta 'Nam, an' you fight as good in that jungle as well as ya did in this one, not only willya be able to help me get this shit wrapped up, quick, you'll have the whole fuckin' US military backin' you up, an' after we win, an' you come back ta these streets, you'll get some respect. Nobody will ever call ya those filthy names, again."

Liv just looked at him like he was crazy.

"You want me to trade one jungle for another so I can get a chestful of medals?"

"I'm your superior, kid. When I tell youse what to do, you don't get to think about it. But, just this once, I'll give youse a pass. You go ahead an' think it over. Ya don't hafta decide tonight. C'mon, let's go to bed. I wanna have somethin' ta think about while I'm inna jungle hellhole."

"An' Director Fury, he's in on this, too?"

"You betcha. Kid, trust me. You're better off in the jungle in 'Nam with me an' your friends thean youse are in this jungle, alone. Ya might die in 'Nam. But without us, ya will die in New York. I can just about guaran-fuckin'-tee it."

"When ya leavin', Eddie?"

"Day after tomorrow."

"Then I'm takin' tomorrow off. Well, don't just sit there! We ain't got much time, do we?"

"No, kid. We don't."


End file.
